by Cedric Nye
Rage and Ruin
-Zombie Fighter Jango-
-Book 3-
Cedric Nye
All Rights Reserved
2014
This book is dedicated to my wife.
Without you, I would still be walking
the Apocalypse Road.
This book is a work of fiction. All persons in this book are fictitious and completely a product of the author’s mind. Any resemblance to any person, either living or dead, is entirely coincidental, and should be ignored.
Acknowledgements.
I want to thank each and every person who has read my books. You rock, and I dig you.
1
Jango knelt behind a huge lava rock at the top of Moon Mountain. He watched as the pack of zombies that was hunting him made their way up the switch-back dirt road that led to his hiding place. There were over twenty zombies in the pack, and they were all of the fast variety.
As he waited for his pursuers, his thoughts wandered as he thought about how the zombies had changed over the last several months. He had mentally separated them into two distinct categories: The fast zombies, and the slow zombies.
The fast zombies never seemed to rot, and they also seemed to become more coordinated as their un-death progressed. He had decided to call them “jacks” because they reminded him of people who over-used amphetamines. Except that jacks did not need meth-amphetamines to get jacked up, because they were always like that.
The slow zombies, on the other hand, were more like the zombies he had seen in the horror movies. They decomposed, moved more slowly than humans move, and seemed to migrate in huge herds. Their movements were erratic, jerky, and uncoordinated. He called them goobers.
All of the zombies started out like jacks; stronger and faster than most humans were, but uncoordinated. Either their coordination would improve as their un-death progressed, or they would begin to rot slowly as the Z-Virus completed its evolution in the human host.
This particular pack of jacks had moved into the area a few days ago, and he had been watching them ever since. They showed a definite purpose as the creatures sniffed the air, and cocked their heads to listen. He gave a slight shudder as he looked them over. He felt like he would never get used to how they looked.
The creatures only resembled humans in their general shape, as the strange evolution or mutation that the Z-Virus had wrought in the human DNA changed them drastically. Their skin was gray in color, with a waxy, chitinous shine that gave them an almost insect-like appearance. Their eyes were milky white orbs that seemed to only be capable of discerning movement at very short distances. Their human ears had all but disappeared, and become small pits in the sides of their heads. Their nostrils had distended until each one was nearly an inch in diameter. All sign of normal human musculature had changed as well. Their limbs and torsos were completely smooth with no real muscular definition, which reinforced their resemblance to insects. He found himself wishing that they would wear clothes. Just another thing Hollywood had gotten wrong. Clothes wear out, and zombies did not go clothes shopping.
Shaking his head clear of all thoughts, he directed his attention back to the pack of zombies. They had just reached the final switch-back, and were starting up the last stretch of gravel road that led to the top of the small mountain.
Suddenly, the zombies seemed to sense how close he was, and as one, they raised their hunting cries to the sky in an ear-splitting cacophony of nightmarish hunger-howls, and then charged at the crest of the mountain in a blur-fast rush of whirring limbs.
Galvanized into action by their keening wails, he grabbed the free end of a thick wooden fence post that was wedged beneath a Volkswagen-sized boulder and heaved. He had spent hours digging around the base of the enormous lava-rock, and his work paid off. With a crunching roar and a rattle of smaller stones, the huge rock began to make its ponderous way down the path toward the charging zombies.
The huge boulder followed the path of the road, and tore loose several smaller boulders as it gained speed on its down-hill plunge. The massive stone struck a rocky projection in the road, and jumped eight feet in the air. It struck the pack of zombies while it was still four feet off the ground, and the results were devastating. With inexorable force, the rock crushed the creatures it struck like a mill-wheel crushes wheat. There was no pause in its movement or delay in its drop when it encountered meat; there was only death. Only the ghastly gray smears of burst organs and tissues were left behind as the giant stone thundered on down the mountain.
The few remaining zombies had nowhere to go as the mini-avalanche of rocks swept over them. The rocks tore them to pieces, and ground their limbs into a gray paste.
When the dust had settled, and the thunder of rocks had ceased, there were no zombies left standing on the rock and gravel road that led to the top of Moon Mountain.
There were three zombies who had survived the onslaught, though. Their bodies were mangled and torn, yet they continued trying to crawl toward their meal. Gray blood and foam flecked their lips as they tried to howl. Jango pulled his Ironwood stick over his shoulder from a scabbard on his back, and then swiftly dispatched the three survivors with skull-crushing blows from the heavy stick.
He stared down at the mangled mass of limbs and gore, and wondered fleetingly if he was being foolish by continuing to fight the undead. It seemed to him that for every creature he killed, two more sprang up to take its place. It would be so much easier to just lie down, and never get back up. Just lay down the burden of his battle, and step off of the Apocalypse Road. Let the soft, gentle mantles of darkness and death cover him... He savagely forced the fatalistic thoughts from his head.
“I ain’t ready for the Bo tree just yet,” he muttered darkly.
Brought out of his reverie by the cool touch of the lengthening shadows, which were the heralds for sunset, he felt a twinge of fear. His pulse quickened at the thought of being caught out in the open after dark.
2
Moving quickly, he stripped some small branches from a nearby creosote bush. After stripping the leaves off, and discarding the twigs, he began crushing and rolling the pungent smelling leaves between the hard, callus-covered palms of his hands. The strong scent rose up from his hands as he worked the leaves into a sticky paste. Once the leaves had reached the consistency he wanted, he began rubbing the leaves on his skin, hair, the bottoms of his boots, and his clothing.
He had defied the odds by surviving where so many had perished, because he did not neglect any aspect of his survival. There was nothing too small or too insignificant when it came to survival.
He had learned quickly that all of the zombies had poor eyesight, but excellent audio and olfactory senses. He had adapted his life to encompass those facts. When he had taken the leaves from the Creosote bush and used them to cover his scent, he did it without conscious thought.
He took one last look at the dead hunting pack, and then turned his back to the carnage and the setting sun. He made his way down the eastern slope of Moon Mountain, flitting like a ghost through the large volcanic rocks and the tall, barbed Saguaro cacti that dotted the slope.
At the base of the mountain was a small cookie-cutter subdivision filled with what once had been quarter million dollar homes. The entire subdivision was just one large cul-de-sac. He moved with practiced ease over brick walls and through weed choked yards until he had crossed the entire subdivision. Then he began making his way up the slope of the unnamed hill behind Moon Mountain.
Dusk had turned the world to shadows by the time he began making his way up
the slope. He took extra care as he ascended the small mountain. The soles of his boots never touched the ground; instead, he stepped or jumped from rock to rock, and boulder to boulder. He took care to leave no sign of his passage in the alkali dust of the hard packed desert, because zombies were not the only dangerous creatures in Phoenix.
Glancing over his shoulder at the western horizon as he reached the top of the small mountain, he found himself marveling at the beautiful hues of red and purple that the sunset had smeared across the desert sky. Since humans had become all but extinct, the world's smog and pollution had cleared up, and nature had begun to reassert its hold on the earth.
Grass and weeds had forced their way through the roads and sidewalks like a slow-motion jackhammer, and, from within, the plants sought to tear apart mankind's unnatural creation; the concrete jungle.
When the red hues had disappeared from the sky and the purple had darkened until it was almost black, he finished making his way up the mountain.
When he reached the top, he chuckled to himself as he looked down and thought about how only a year and a half ago, he had been living in the section eight apartment buildings at the base of Moon Mountain.
The Granite Bay Apartments had now become a hunting ground for dogs, cats, and coyotes. In Jango's mind, the apartment complex had improved. Gone were all of the used condoms that once were scattered all over, rotting and shriveling in the harsh desert sun like some new breed of fish. There were no more fast-food wrappers, no more plastic water bottles, and no more people, either. The drug-dealers, pimps, hustlers, whores, and junkies were all gone; they were either dead or undead now.
He had always thought that Styrofoam and plastic would last for thousands of years; but not in the desert. The plastic bottles, condoms, and Styrofoam cups had swiftly succumbed to the unrelenting power of the sun, and of entropy. With no humans to replenish the supply of garbage, Phoenix had, like her namesake, slowly risen from the ashes of apocalypse with a clean, new face.
He had always had a fierce and stubborn pride because he lived in the desert. In a land of sand, cacti, lava-rock, and tough, thorny scrub, Jango found a measure of peace that was unavailable to him when he lived in softer places.
The zombie apocalypse had been good to him, and good for him as well. Before the Z-Virus had come along to decimate humanity, he had lived as an outcast; alone among many. He had spent all of his free time preparing for what he considered inevitable; someone trying to take his property, or his life. He had turned his body into a weapon, or a series of weapons. He had hardened his thews in the crucibles of exercise and combat until his abilities seemed almost super-human. His rigorously manic exercise regimen was complemented by the fact that his mind had splintered during a severely traumatic attack when he was four years old, and he had three other completely individual entities living in his mind, and sharing his body.
Those three entities housed his abilities to engage in flawless and deadly combat with any weapon, both standard and improvised, perform unsurpassed feats of strength, tolerate obscene levels of pain without complaint, and endure deprivations that would kill most humans.
The entity that swelled his thews with the killing strength manifested as a giant dog, similar to a Rottweiler in appearance, yet closer to a pony in size. The dog was the most calm and level-headed of the three.
The entity, or personality that held the ability to utilize any weapon even without prior knowledge of a weapon, and the ability to fight like a well-oiled machine, manifested as a strikingly beautiful and nude albino woman. Her personality was anything but calm, and her propensity for violence could shock even Jango at times.
Jango was what the others called “the pain-taker.” His personality was the ragged sutures forged of will and rage that bound them all together. He was the blood-soaked rag that held closed the wounds of their soul. His personality remained dominant because of his ability to endure and thrive where others would perish.
The final entity was the beast. The steel juggernaut that raked claws made of screams along the bones of their soul. All of the pain that Jango had endured as a child had never left his mind. That pain had created a sort of primordial ooze in his fractured mind that sloshed and bled until the beast was birthed from the suffering. The beast lived in a cage forged of willpower deep in the recesses of the mad matrix of his splintered mind. It rattled the cage and roared for release, but he was loath to ever set the beast loose…again.
The beast was made of screams and blood; of broken bones and slaughter. The beast had only been released once, and the carnage that had followed had been horrifying. All of the personalities had merged seamlessly, and glutted their fearsome appetite for slaughter on a large group of Army reservists who had turned to rape and murder. When the dust had settled, none of the reservists had been left standing and Jango had almost died.
He had spent nearly a month in a comatose state after that ordeal, and during that time, a nurse named Eve had searched a sample of his blood for the answers to the question of his abnormal strength. What Eve had found shocked him to his very core...at first.
His blood sample revealed that he had contracted the Z-Virus; however, due to some genetic abnormalities, his system had fought the terrible Z-Virus to a stand-still, and then assimilated it. The mutations caused by the assimilation of the virus had taken his already prodigious strength to a superhuman level.
It had scared him at first, to think that he had become what he termed as "part goober", but he had swiftly adapted to his new-found abilities. He searched himself for weaknesses, and pushed his body to collapse time and again as he sought to grow stronger.
"Gotta be hard and cold to survive this world,” he muttered to himself as he turned away from the view of his old apartments, and continued toward the place he had chosen for his camp that night. He never camped in the same place for more than one night at a time, and he moved around the corpse of the huge city like a nomad. He had cached weapons and food all over the Phoenix metropolitan area while waging his relentless war on the zombies, so he was never far from supplies.
He made his way down the lava encrusted hill, which ended abruptly at a shallow ravine that had once served the city as an over-flow for floods during the monsoon season. Without humans to maintain it, the ditch had changed from semi-wild, to complete wilderness. An almost impenetrable bramble of Mesquite, Palo Verde, Ironwood, and Creosote lined the edges of the ravine. The impenetrability of it had caused it to become a sanctuary for a myriad of creatures; a self-contained ecosystem of survivors.
When he reached the dense thicket of twisted and thorny branches, he took one last long look around into the gathering darkness and strained his ears for the slightest hint of any noise that was out of place. When he had reassured himself that only he and the animals occupied the immediate area, he shed his backpack and reached his hand into an especially dense spot in the natural barrier. With a soft exhalation, he lifted and pulled a small section away from the rest. Behind the dense and heavily barbed section of desert flora was a narrow tunnel that led through the thicket.
Turning his back to the tunnel, he knelt in the sand and placed his forearms on the ground with his palms facing up. He then pushed his hands under his heavy backpack, and flipped the pack onto his forearms. Then, with only his forearms and toes touching the gravel laden sand, he slowly wormed his way into the narrow confines of the dark tunnel. Once he was fully within the tunnel, Jango took hold of a short branch that protruded from the large, heavy, ironwood log that had been attached to the thorny bramble. As he slowly inched his way backward, he pulled the camouflaged door to the tunnel closed.
3
Once the door had been replaced to his satisfaction, he wormed his way backward for about twenty-five or thirty feet before he reached an area of the tunnel that he had widened out. Here, he turned himself around and continued down the tunnel at a more rapid pace. When Jango finally emerged from the two-foot diameter hole, full night had fallen. He look
ed up at the sky and marveled at the brilliant clarity of the stars that were salted across the sky like glittering diamonds on a black woolen mantle. He felt like he would never get used to how brightly the stars could shine without the hand of man to dim them.
He shook his head and grinned ruefully as he considered his recent propensity toward post-apocalyptic philosophy and cynical judgment of his almost-extinct species. After stretching his limbs, he replaced his backpack on his back over top of the scabbards that held his heavy, knotted stick of dense, desert Ironwood and his pump shotgun. He took a long look around at the shadowed lines of the sand filled, rock strewn wash that had once been home to bums, winos, transients, and criminals. Now, it was one of the safest places in the world.
He shrugged his thick shoulders, turned, and headed into the night toward the spot where he had decided to camp. His destination was a small semicircular area enclosed on three sides by tangled walls of Mesquite, brittle bush, and creosote bush. The floor of the area was covered in a thick growth of grass that was kept from growing too long by the local wildlife.
Jango removed his backpack, and sighed contentedly as he knelt down at the edge of the grassy area, and reached into a small alcove in the natural wall. When he pulled his hand out of the alcove, he held a sleeping bag that was covered by a heavy plastic bag. He removed the sleeping bag from the plastic, spread the plastic on the ground, and then unrolled the sleeping bag atop the plastic. He reached back into the alcove and retrieved a one-pound plastic bag of beef jerky.
He sliced the bag open with his Spyderco Paramilitary 2 folding pocket knife. He had chosen the Paramilitary to replace the Spyderco Mannix that he had lost while trying to decapitate a zombie. Jango had wanted the zombie’s head so that he could attempt to find and remove the saliva glands. He had come up with the idea of tipping arrows or blow darts with the zombie's saliva in case he found himself waging guerrilla warfare against a superior enemy. Unfortunately, the zombie had not been quite dead when he had begun sawing at the thick, chitinous skin of the jack's neck.