Beginning of the New Beginning, Vol. 2

by W. Joe Taylor

  “Vinny, get your stupid ass out of there now! The RV gang freed Shannon, and they are headed your way!”

  Without hesitation, Vinny grabbed the radio and ran through the house and out the back door. By the time Q noticed him, Charles was already stopping on the road three hundred yards to the west, waiting for him to get in.

  Q and the others entered the house and found Bill.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” said Bill, “don’t hurry next time. I was just about to enjoy sex for the first time in weeks.”

  “Sorry, man, we hurried as best as we could. Thankfully, they hadn’t hurt Kathrin yet. She was in about the same predicament you are. Those greedy bastards didn’t waste any time. It sucks the pilot spotted us. We could have gotten the other guy too,” Q explained as he freed Bill from his bonds.

  “Hang on, Q. Maybe you give me a few minutes before you release his hands,” Charity said playfully.

  “I would love to give you some time, Charity, but we need to get as far away from this place as we can. And I mean now.”

  Bill stood up and walked over to Kathrin. He pulled her into a hug.

  “Are you ok? Thank you for being brave. I had no idea it would go that far. They got us by surprise at the blockade. I thought we would have gotten them. I’m so sorry.”

  “Yea, I’m good. Without Terry here, I thought I was ready to die. But I get to live to fight another day.”

  “Good. I feel like you’re one of my daughters now. If you died, it would be like losing one of them.”

  “Thanks. I know it’s only not even a day yet, but I’m getting better. Things in this new world happen so much faster now that you don’t have time to dwell on shit like you used to.”

  “I’m glad you’re seeing it now too.”

  Bill looked at the pile of clothing that used to be his. He grabbed his boots and put them on with no socks. Then he grabbed his helmet and put it on. The only thing Vinny hadn’t removed had been his boxers. Then he made eye contact with Mike.

  “You were right, man. It was a good plan and worked out ok after all.”

  “I knew that if you guys did end up captured, they would take advantage of the situation. I’ve known most of them guys since grade school. Vinny always had a loose screw. There were a lot of rumors about missing persons tied to him over the years, but the police never could put him at the scene of the crime. Or find any evidence. Most of the time, they never found a body. It was just another unsolved mystery.”

  “Yea, he was scary good at what he did. And efficient. That only happens with practice.”

  Bill grabbed his tac vest, threw that on, and then grabbed his guns. He looked around the room quizzically.

  “What are you looking for?” Q asked.

  “The radio. I guess that piece of shit grabbed it as he ran out.”

  “I think you’re right. I don’t see it either.”

  “Ok, let’s get the fuck out of this shithole.”

  The six of them walked out of the house in time to see the convoy arrive—just ahead of an angry horde of thrillers.

  “Who the fuck is driving my 4Runner?”

  “Sasha. Apparently, Jane won’t let her drive the Sportsmobile yet,” Charity said with a giggle.

  “Goddamn, what a shitty day. You know you’re the only other person to ever drive that thing.”

  “Yea, I know. Come on, cowboy, let’s get you cleaned up,” she said as she walked him to the trailer and followed him in.

  “What are you doing? You gotta drive. I don’t know how good Sasha’s driving skills are,” Bill said, almost in a panic.

  Before he could say anything else, Charity grabbed both sides of his face and kissed him, not a peck this time, but a deep, passionate kiss, one between two desperate people who had very little time left to live.

  Chapter 6. Campbellsville.

  “I’m going to catch that motherfucker, and I’m going to make him fucking beg me for death,” said Vinny. “I’m going to cut little pieces off of him and force him to eat himself. Just enough to keep him alive until I’m done with him. Fuck that guy and fuck his big, burly, handsome friend.”

  “Dude, you need to calm the fuck down. Your ego just got seven good men killed. It almost got you killed. So, you better settle the fuck down before I kick your ass out of this goddamned airplane at 25,000 feet.”

  “Yea, I’d like to see you try.”

  “I know you’re ‘the boss’ and all that shit, but we’ve known each other for nearly our whole lives. I kicked your ass from junior high all the way through college. And I will kick your stupid ass now. Listen, we tell GM most of what happened. They ambushed you, and the other guys died protecting you. We need to beef up and go after them again. It’s not just about them helping our slaves escape anymore, but now it’s about blood for blood.”

  “FUUUUUCK!!!! Fine. Whatever, man. Bill is mine, though. And his friend if we capture them alive. I’m going to cut off and make them eat each other’s dicks.”

  Charles lined up the PC-12 for final approach on Runway 29 and greased it in like an old pro. He pulled up in front of the hanger that housed the plane and shut down there. They didn’t bother to put the plane inside because they had a pretty good idea they would be taking off again soon. They got in Vinny’s newly acquired Corvette and drove over to the Grand Masters house.

  “Looks like someone’s been busy since we left. Almost all the dead heads are gone,” Charles observed from the passenger seat of the sports car going entirely too fast.

  “Yea, seems like the pile of them is burning pretty good over at the ol’ Memorial Gardens. I saw the smoke as we were coming in for landing.”

  “Me too.”

  Vinny pulled up into the circle drive and revved the engine to announce their arrival. By the time they got to the front door, a young woman with blond hair already had it open, and she just stared at her feet. Neither man hardly paid her any mind. They viewed her as nothing more than a door stopper.

  “Gentlemen, glad you made it back safe,” a loud, deep voice boomed throughout the house. The two guests looked up and saw a very large man, six feet eight inches tall, pushing 320 pounds.

  Campbellsville was a very small town, and when someone was remotely famous for the smallest thing, everyone in town knew it. The person would be a local celebrity, but this came with all the same perks as if they’d been an A-list celeb in Hollywood. This had been true for Vinny, with his stunt driver bit, and the Grand Master. He’d been born Gary Michelson, but everyone called him GM for short. He’d started studying martial arts in junior high and continued throughout high school. He’d gone to state for high school wrestling. While attending the University of Louisville School of Psychology, he’d gone semi-pro in MMA. His record had been 23-1-0. That one loss had ended his career. An overly ambitious competitor had broken his knee and femur with an illegal move. Since then, GM had never fought professionally again.

  The day the dead started walking on the earth, he killed 145 dead heads with his bare hands trying to save his family. Once he realized that everyone he cared about was dead, he decided then and there he was going to take care of himself. Something inside him snapped; he was going to be a king. He rounded up the few friends he had, and they started rounding up everyone else. If you backed his ideas, you became a minion. If you didn’t, you became a slave.

  On the third day of ZomPoc, five guys posed as minions, and tried to undermine GM’s authority. They didn’t agree with his plan, nor did they like his methods. Their plan was to overwhelm him by sheer numbers. They knew a couple of them would take some hits, but they were no slouches themselves. All had been trained in one form of martial arts or another. GM knocked unconscious all five in a matter of minutes. Halfway through the fight, Vinny and Charles ran into the office to see what the commotion was about and witnessed the total annihilation of the five men. They were taken to the Campbellsville University Theater, because GM wanted to put on a display of power and give everyone a reason to fea
r him. Onstage, the five men were stripped naked and placed in stocks. All five faced to the left side of the stage. In the aisles, against the walls, stood the minions with weapons. All the slaves were brought in from the jail and sat in the seats. Once everyone was in place, GM began to beat and brutally rape each of the five men onstage.

  After a few hours, in front of every man on stage was a pile of blood-soaked teeth. He whipped the men with a cat of nine tails until their backs were shredded and they had sections of flayed meat flay hanging down their sides. When one would pass out from the pain, GM would move to the next. When he made his way around to the front again, he would revive them with smelling salts. He went through twenty smelling salts during the course of his show. The audience was dead quiet for the duration. Not even the minions made a peep. Nobody wanted that wrath turned on them.

  “This is what happens when you don’t follow directions.”

  He roundhouse kicked one of the men in the side of the face. The audience could hear the snap of the man’s neck break, because there was only so far a body could go, being in the stocks.

  “This is what happens when you try to overthrow my power.”

  GM walked behind a different man and castrated him. The audience watched the man’s eyes widen and his mouth open in a silent scream. Tears rolled down his cheeks. Then he passed out again. Blood poured out and ran down the inside of his thighs and pooled up on the stage. That man bled to death. GM continued beating the other men for another thirty minutes until the broken-neck guy reanimated.

  “ARGHRGHRGHRGHRGHRGH!”

  “What the fuck? How is that possible?”

  GM walked over to the deadhead and stared in disbelief. GM was naked as a jay bird, with a raging boner. He had taken the three Viagra and a tab of ecstasy, and had done two lines of coke before the show. He was totally confused as to how this man with the broken neck could possibly have reanimated.

  “Are you guys seeing this shit? He wasn’t bitten, was he? Gary, get your ass over here and check him for bites.”

  Gary was the only doctor they’d found alive at the hospital when they’d cleared it. He quickly scampered over and declared broken-neck free of deadhead bites. GM walked around and killed the remaining three men.

  “I need some fucking pussy now. All this work has made me horny again.”

  He walked out into the audience and selected a woman at random. Then he took her backstage and had his way with her until the other four men reanimated. When he came back up to the front, he asked Gary what his professional opinion was.

  “It seems as though when we were all sick the other day, it was because the zom—deadhead virus is…somehow in all of us. We either that have natural immunities, or a strong enough immune system to fight off the disease. It would appear that transference of fluid is not how deadheads are created. It’s death itself. That means we all have the potential to become one. Every person who dies from now on must have their brain ruined, or they will kill.”

  “You guys heard the doc. Now, someone get these fucking pieces of shit off my stage. Anybody, I mean anybody, fucks with me again, and I’ll keep you alive a lot longer than these five motherfuckers.” GM’s little display of power had started four hours ago.

  As Vinny replayed the memory of the events from the prior week in his mind, he started to get hard again.

  “So, tell me, fellas,” said GM, “what did you find out about our friends who escaped?”

  “Well,” replied Vinny, “we lost them. The RV gang is very resourceful and managed to take out all of our guys. And Brandy is dead.”

  “You little motherfucker. How could you let this happen? I put you in charge, and this is how you repay me? Getting our guys killed and one of the targets? This better be fucking good, or I’m just going to blow your brains out right now,” GM said as he pulled out a Smith & Wesson 500 Magnum from a shoulder holster.

  Vinny and Charles quickly told him about what happened and how the RV gang had gotten away. They fed off each other and embellished a little on the last part. GM seemed to accept it, although he wasn’t any happier.

  “OK, well, I’ve been thinking. I want to get a few things from Fort Knox and then move the whole operation up to Billings, Montana.”

  “What? Why? I-I…uh, I mean, I’m not questioning you, boss. Don’t hear what I’m not saying, but why move up to Montana? We were just getting things here situated again.”

  Charles stumbled over his words, trying to sound humble, but he wanted answers at the same time. They had all lived in the small town most of their lives. They knew nothing of the cold winters that far north, and it was already September.

  “Why? WHY? Because I want out of this crummy little town full of nothing but bad memories now. Everywhere I turn, I see my mom, my sisters, and my dad. I want to start a new life. Follow me.”

  GM turned and walked into the office he had emerged from when the other two had first gotten there. Large bay windows looked across the pool and out to the lake. The afternoon sun was beaming in. The office was adorned with modern furniture and a glass desk, and the room was sparsely decorated. He went over to the bar set up along the left wall and poured three lowball glasses of Kentucky bourbon. He told the other two to grab their glasses and then follow him over to the conference table. There, GM had laid out a very large map of the United States with red circles scattered throughout. There were many more along the eastern side of the map and around the Great Lakes.

  “In the center of the red circles are nuclear power plants. The red circles are the immediate fallout areas. They have a radius of about a hundred miles from each plant. As you can see, we’re pretty safe here as long as the fallout doesn’t blow over on us. But up here, we wouldn’t have to worry about that.”

  “OK, I see where you’re going with this, and it’s a good idea, but moving the whole operation?”

  “Yes, that’s where you come in, my flying friend. Get a few guys together, go back up to the international airport, and bring me back a bigger plane. Then we load up everyone, along with the ammo you’re about to bring back from Fort Knox, and we go take over Billings.”

  “Yea, sure, boss. We can do that,” Vinny said enthusiastically. “When do you want us to go after the RV gang?”

  “After the move. I figure as long as everything goes well, we should be set up in a couple of days. We will have new minions from Montana, and it will give you better resources. Besides, you guys said they were going west. If they are as smart as you say they are, they will have thought about the nuclear problem also. My guess is they will probably be setting up around Wyoming, or hell, how lucky would it be if they came to us?”

  “Yea, that would be lucky.”

  The three men had a few more drinks and discussed some of the finer details until they had a solid plan. Vinny and Charles headed over to the university, where the minions were housed, and grabbed six more men. It was not quite what they’d predicted, but they headed back to the airport and prepped the plane for a flight up to Fort Knox.

  “Dude, this is some fucked-up shit. We’re going to die if we go to the Army base. Based on averages alone, there’s probably a thousand Army guys there. We both know the United States will protect the bullion depository with their dying breath. You aren’t serious about this, are you?” Vinny asked Charles.

  “Fuck yea, I am. The worst thing that happens is we get shot by the Army. If we don’t succeed at this mission, you know what GM will do to us. He been hosting his little shows every day since Steve burned down the fucking jail.”

  “Yea, fine. I’d rather die fighting like a man than be beaten to death by a fucking monster.”

  “You mean like you would do to people?”

  “Fuck off, man. I don’t beat people to a bloody pulp.”

  “That doesn’t justify some of the shit I know you’ve done.”

  “All right, I will give you that, but I’m not power hungry.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Fuck you, m
an. We’re in this together. We both went in with GM hook, line, and sinker.”

  “Yea, but unlike you, I don’t enjoy his dick in my ass.”

  “HAHAHAHAH! It is big. Ok, let’s get this suicide mission over with.”

  It was already six in the afternoon when they left Campbellsville airport. During the one-hour flight to Fort Knox, Jeremy shared that he’d been in the Army National Guard before ZomPoc. He told everyone that the Army kept soldiers posted in all the main buildings twenty-four-seven, even holidays. He called it a high-vis base, and congressmen liked to visit on the regular. He also informed them that the base had solar power for times just like this, to power all the important buildings.

  As they flew over the perimeter fence, they noticed large pockets of deadheads gathered at the gates, trying to enter the base. The Army had put up T barriers to block all traffic going in and out of most of them. Only one gate had an opening wide enough to get a single vehicle through at a time. They also had put up the large concrete barriers blocking off Bullion Boulevard just past the interchange clover.

  After they landed on Runway 36, Charles taxied up to the airfield operations building without any one stopping them. Charles shut down the plane, and all eight men disembarked.

  Charles led everyone around to the side of the building. When they’d taxied in, he’d saw a fifteen-passenger van parked over there. That usually meant it was waiting for a plane to land and take whoever had just landed over to the base hotel. As they approached, there was a deadhead in the driver’s seat, so Vinny told one of the guys to get rid of it. Soon they were driving across the Army post, following Jeremy’s directions to the armory.

  “Where are all the Army men?” asked Vinny.

  “Most of them probably left on day one or two and tried to find their family. If we find anybody, they are most likely going to be single men with nowhere else to go,” Jeremy explained.

  “I’m guessing the base commander and his ass kissers are still at the command post trying to keep things under control. But they won’t send their security detail after us. They probably won’t even notice us. They think the base is locked down.”