Rage And Ruin: Zombie Fighter Jango #3 (Zombie Fighter Jango series)

by Cedric Nye

  He walked out, and had just closed the doors before a muffled “WHOOMPH” sound came from the other side of them.

  He figured that the room, being made of stone and concrete, would contain the fire well, and that all traces of the foul practices once enacted in the room would be erased.

  With the now-free victims armed, and following his lead, Jango made his way all the way back to Bartertown. Past the entrance to Builder’s Square, and past the gaping and incredulous faces of the denizens of the Convention Center, and then down into the dark dampness, and relative safety of Bartertown.

  37

  Making a rough estimate, Jango guessed that there were at least fifty women and children in his rag-tag army, and he decided to lead them back to where he had eaten at the Green Bus earlier in the day. It seemed like a lifetime ago that he had enjoyed that huge, steaming meal, but he knew it had been only a couple of hours.

  Once at the bus, he ordered food and drinks for the escapees, and paid with Tags. Allison just looked at the group in shock, until she recognized some people who had been thought to be dead.

  Pretty soon, they were all hugging and crying, which set Jango’s teeth on edge. He busied himself with keeping watch for any signs of troops or other retaliation rather than allowing the rampant emotions of the people to bother him.

  Meanwhile, word had spread with the speed of light about the daring rescue and subsequent immolation of the foul Consortium thugs who had been known as the “Black Coats” by many. People drifted over, and many found loved ones and friends who had been taken by the Black Coats.

  Pretty soon, men and women started bringing clothing, sleeping bags, blankets, and more to help the recently freed group of people. Jango watched bemusedly, as he pondered these simple folk. Upstairs, people lived in relative luxury, yet did nothing to help those less fortunate than they. They simply shut them away in Bartertown. Meanwhile, the people who had so little were finding ways to give to those who needed it.

  “Fucking humans,” he sighed, “I love them and I hate them.”

  He looked up to see Jarvis, a woman, and three children standing around one of the women who had come down with him from The Barracks. Jarvis stood to one side, while the two women embraced tearfully. Jarvis saw him watching, and he went over to stand beside Jango.

  “Is it true, then?” he asked tentatively. “Did you shoot them all down and burn them?”

  “I clean up my messes, Englishman. I heard that they would bring hell down on Bartertown because of me killing those men, so I gave them more to worry about than Bartertown.” Jango replied softly. He added, “I heard they… HURT kids, like, a bad kind of hurt. I won’t have it. I just will not abide it in my presence.”

  Jarvis looked at him, and said, “Mate, you are a fuckin’ legend.”

  Jango sighed, “I doubt I got them all. It looked like probably twice that number lived there. They must have been out. I am certain they will be gunning for me. Plenty of folks saw me going in, and coming out. The difference is, now you all are armed down here, and they will be hunting me, not you. It is time for war, and war it will be.”

  “Man,” Jarvis entreated, “what can you do? You caught them off guard, yeah? Now they will be looking for you, and they’ll recruit help, mate, believe that! How do you think they knew you had come by my booth? Snitches, mate, fuckin’ wags.”

  “Tarzan,” Jango smiled, “I will just do what I do. I will go to ground, and I will fight until either I am dead, or they are.” He smiled because of his love for the stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs about the legendary ape-man, Tarzan. Tarzan knew how to fight guerilla style, and so did he.

  “You don’t get it, Guv’, every hand will be against you, whether intentional or not. No one will risk helping you, mate. Not even that Vanessa lady.”

  Jango sighed at the truth of what the knife maker had said. “Yeah, but I don’t see any other options.”

  “Just leave, mate!” Jarvis said vehemently. “I know you’re that Zombie Fighter guy, you can live out there, no problem. Just get the fuck out, mate. At least you will be alive, and the world needs more men like you.” He finished quietly.

  In a rare show of affection, Jango patted Jarvis once on the back, and said, “Yeah, but what kind of life would that be? Leave you all to the butcher while I run off? No. I will fight. I need to go, man. Be safe, keep your eyes open, and do NOT give up those guns I had the women and kids carry down here.”

  When he finished speaking, he turned, and headed back toward the upper levels of the Center, and whatever fate had in store for him.

  38

  While Jango prepared to wage a one-man war against the powers that be, Vanessa found herself in danger. The Consortium, and all of their remaining Black Coats were squared off in front of her and her meager squad of security personnel. A skinny, scruffy man named Jim Elam, one of the big-shots, was telling her how it was her fault that his men had been killed in cold blood. It took all of her control to keep her mouth shut. She knew what those men did in The Barracks, and she had secretly cheered when the news of what Jango had done reached her. Now, she wondered if she and her staff would be killed.

  “So, you see our problem, don’t you?” Elam drawled. “We need to know that you are not part of the problem, and the best way you can do that is to help us hunt down and kill this “Zombie Fucker” that you brought into our home. If you bring a snake into the house, expect to get bitten. Well, we have been bitten, and now we must kill the snake before it bites anyone else.”

  Vanessa mentally weighed the life of Jango against the lives of her staff, herself, Eve, and all of the people who she was able to help on a day to day basis because of her position, and she knew what she had to do, even though it killed her. She knew that Jango would understand.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Elam,” she replied woodenly. “Myself and my staff are at your disposal. We will hunt down and kill the dangerous fugitive.”

  Elam smiled like a shark, “Wonderful! Then that’s settled. I expect hourly progress reports by radio until you have brought me this man’s head on a plate.” He waved his hand at her, and said, “That’ll be all.”

  Inwardly seething, Vanessa took her leave of the room, and led her small force back to her headquarters, and, once the door was closed behind them, she broke down in tears.

  Ian stepped forward, and patted her on her shoulder. Pretty soon all of her personnel were attempting to comfort her. They had all heard the stories that she, and other people had told about the man named Jango, so they knew that her depth of feeling for him went all the way to the bone.

  “Is there any way we can just kind of get out of the way for a while?” Ian asked tremulously, still patting her shoulder. He continued, “I mean, I don’t know Jango like you do, but do you think he is the kind of guy to just sit around and wait for people to come and kill him?”

  Vanessa looked up, eyes swollen. She thought about it for a moment, and then smiled, “No, I don’t think he is the kind of person who would just sit around waiting. I need to get a message to him, but I don’t know where he is.”

  Ian sighed, and said, “I think I know where I can get a message to him. Write it down, and I will take it there.”

  Vanessa wrote a quick message explaining the situation, and then began giving orders to her staff as soon as Ian left with the message.

  Her orders were simple. All of her staff were to gather up their families quickly and quietly, and then make their way down to Bartertown. It was well-known that Bartertown had tunnels and caves that connected to other parts of the city, and that many people had hidden out down there to avoid capture.

  While her staff filed out to do as they had been bid, Vanessa headed for her quarters to collect Eve, and the baby, Promise.

  39

  When she arrived at her quarters, she knew that something was wrong before she even entered the spacious room that she shared with Eve. The door had been broken in. The sight that met her eyes when she entered her home
drove the breath from her lungs, and made her knees weak. She fell to the floor, sobs escaping from her throat as she took in the sight of Eve’s torn and beaten body lying in a pool of her own blood in the middle of the floor. In her grief, she forgot about Promise, who was nowhere to be seen.

  She hardly noticed when two Black Coats lifted her roughly from the floor by her arms, disarmed her, and dragged her out of her quarters. They hauled her toward the far wing of the Center that housed the Consortium members, and no one was there to see her get taken.

  She did not know it yet, but her orders had saved the lives of her staff and their families, most of whom had already made their way down into the bowels of Bartertown. It may have given her some measure of peace as awareness of where she was being taken hit home, and she began to struggle against her captors. A hard fist against her temple laid a blanket of sparking darkness over her senses, and then she knew nothing more as the darkness took her.

  40

  At the same time as Vanessa was being taken, Jango was loading up on weapons at The Weapon Shop, and Ian had just found him after sending his children down to their mother in Bartertown. He silently handed Jango the message.

  After reading, and re-reading it, Jango smiled, and said, “Smart girl, V.” He murmured. Then he asked Ian, “So, she headed down there, right?”

  Ian shook his head, “I don’t know, man, but I don’t think so. I heard she headed off to her quarters, so she should have passed me at some point if she had headed down to Bartertown.”

  “Show me on that map exactly where her quarters are, and show me everywhere that this Consortium scum lives.” Jango growled as fear for Vanessa started sending lightning bolts through his nerve endings, fueling the beast of his rage, and setting his strange metabolism to an accelerated rate. In the grips of his fear and rage, he found himself keenly aware of the absence of the other dwellers in his mind, and he wondered if they were gone for good.

  He made himself pay close attention to every word that Ian said, and memorized the entire map of the huge complex. Once he had finished that, and loading up on weaponry, he turned to go.

  “Wait,” Dan, the owner of the shop called out, “I will go with you, man. I can help you,” he practically pleaded.

  Jango looked at him, and believed he meant well, but he also knew that when he walked the Apocalypse Road, he had to walk alone, so he replied, “Sorry, man, but I will be moving fast and hard, and I can’t have anyone slowing me down. This will be do or die, and that is all I know anyway. I would rather have you here where you can load people up to fight if it comes to that.”

  Heading back toward the area where Vanessa’s quarters were located, he stayed keenly aware of his surroundings. He saw the pale faces that looked quickly away before scurrying off, and he knew that he was now hunted. He ducked into a side-room, and closed the door. Taking stock of his surroundings, he located one of the numerous air vents that seemed to mar the ceiling of every room in the enormous Convention Center.

  Crouching low, he gathered his strength, and then jumped straight into the air with all of the power he could muster. He thrust his hands above his head just in time to blast the cover off of the vent, and grab hold of the edge. He quickly pulled himself up, and then into the large ventilation system, replaced the vent cover, and kept moving in the same general direction as he had been moving before.

  Keeping a mental picture of the map in his head, he had a rough idea of when he had reached the area where Vanessa lived. Before he even started to look for a way down, he smelled the copper and iron smell of a mortal amount of blood. He silently cursed as he found a vent that let out into a dark room, and then made his way into the main corridor. The place was empty of people, and very dark, so he took his time, and slowly made his way toward the thick smell of blood.

  When he found the room from where the blood-smell seemed to originate, he cautiously entered the open door, and stood very still just to the side of the door. After several minutes of utter silence, he began to look around.

  He immediately saw Eve’s broken and abused body, with a bullet-hole in the center of her fore-head. The bullet-hole stared at him like an accusing eye, and he whispered, “Oh, no.”

  His whisper was followed by a tentative cry; small, and almost inaudible even in the grave-like silence of the room.

  “Promise?” Jango whispered as he sought to pin-point from where her cry had come. He heard it again, and after several minutes of frantic searching, found her in a secret compartment beneath a large dresser in the back of the spacious room.

  He held the baby close, and rocked with her in his arms for several minutes, not daring to believe that she was real. Eve must have just had enough time to hide the baby before the Black Coats broke through the door, and killed her.

  “Thank you, Eve,” Jango whispered to the unhearing corpse, “Thank you.”

  “We have to move, kid,” Jango said as he remembered what he faced. Vanessa’s message had let him know that Jarvis had been right, and that every hand was turned against him. Only, Vanessa’s people were out of the picture, and safely ensconced in the depths of Bartertown. At least he did not have to fight them as well.

  “You have to go in the bag, Promise.” He opened the bag, and laid the baby on top of his ammunition and grenades, and then he closed the pack, and prepared to move out.

  41

  He checked the corridor, and finding it clear, he ran back to the room where he had climbed out of the ventilation duct, leapt up, and pulled himself into the duct once again, ever mindful of the small baby in his pack.

  Swiftly making his way straight south, and toward the entrance to Bartertown, he silently muttered a prayer to whatever God would listen that the ramp to Bartertown had not been closed to him.

  Luck was with him, and the ramp was empty of Black Coats when he finally left the ventilation system, and cautiously approached the ramp. After several minutes of scanning the area, he decided to go for it.

  He jumped up, action following thought instantly, and he raced across the 200 feet of open area that led to the ramp. He had made it less than halfway when he heard gunfire erupt from behind him, and the almost simultaneous whine and crack of bullets whipping by him. He unslung his pack on the run, and held it in front of himself, effectively putting the bulk of his body between the bullets and the baby as he made the mad dash to the ramp, and then down into the smoky darkness of Bartertown.

  42

  Once the gunfire had faded, and he had made it down the long, circular ramp almost to the bottom, he re-slung his pack, and picked up the pace.

  He moved through Bartertown at a dead run, and made his way back to the Green Bus, where he found a large gathering of people, and many of them were armed. He immediately spotted Ian, his wife, and three carrot-topped children who had to be his. Jango hurried over to where he and his wife stood, and quickly unslung his pack, removed the still-calm baby, and pressed her into Allison’s arms.

  Ian looked a question at him, and Jango shook his head to let the man know that he had not found Vanessa.

  Stepping away from the crowd, Jango told Ian about finding Eve’s body, and how the baby had been hidden. He went on to tell him that gunmen were covering the entrance to Bartertown, and he asked, “Are there any other ways of getting topside from down here?”

  Nodding, Ian spent several minutes explaining how the thick walls of the Center were honey-combed with tunnels and caves to accommodate the pipes and ventilation shafts that such a mammoth structure needs. He pointed off into the darkness, and said, “Over there, way out past the last people, you can get right up to the western part of the center, and where the Consortium members live.”

  Eyes glowing weirdly, Jango sprinted off in the direction that Ian had indicated. Unencumbered by the baby, he moved at a blistering pace, and reached the far side of the massive subterranean vault in a little more than a minute. A few minutes of searching brought him to the vertical tunnel that Ian had described, and, wit
hout a moment’s hesitation, he climbed into the tunnel, and swarmed up the pipes within.

  When he reached the top of the access tunnel, he looked around until he found what looked like an escape hatch. Ian had told him that it was meant to allow access to the ventilation system, and that this particular hatch led to the maze of vents that looked into the many rooms occupied by the Consortium.

  He opened the hatch, and slipped inside quietly. He visualized his position on the memorized map in his head, and started making his way in the general direction of the area that Ian had said was used for large gatherings and meetings.

  He peeked in through every vent that he passed, familiarizing himself with the rooms, and hoping to catch a glimpse of Vanessa. He still had hope that she was alive, and with the faith of a madman, he still believed that he could save her.

  After more than twenty minutes of crawling through the surprisingly clean ventilation shaft, he finally found not only the place where meetings were held, but Vanessa as well.

  43

  He had come far too late to help her. Her small, lithe body had been mutilated almost beyond recognition. She had been tied face-down on a table, and subjected to terrible torture. Knife wounds crisscrossed her back and buttocks, and there were deep, vicious stab wounds to her thighs, buttocks, and genitals.

  There were more than a hundred men milling around in the large room forty feet below him, and one stopped to point and laugh at Vanessa’s savaged remains.

  Jango screamed inside of his mind, and went away within the vaults of horror that made up the twisted, mangled wreckage of his psyche. Frozen, staring at nothing, remembering everything; his world went suddenly red.

  The pathways of his mind shifted and warped under the weight of his suffering. A deep, booming pressure began to pulse behind his skull, until, with a wordless, soundless scream, his face cracking from the inner pressure of his madness, he began to change.