Jango's Anthem: Zombie Fighter Jango #2 (2 page)

Jango decided to finish the problem
right then and there. Still holding his knife in an icepick grip, he threw a hard right cross at the back of the man's neck. He aimed his fist just to the left of the man's neck so that the blade would make contact with the man's neck just at the base of his skull.

Jango's powerful strike
slammed the heavy, razor-edged blade through flesh, and between vertebrae. Jango felt the slight resistance of flesh, and then the wrenching force against the blade as it severed the man’s spinal cord. The man dropped to the floor and lay unmoving.

Chapter 3:

Some Seriously Sick Shit

Jango stared dispassionately at the unmoving corpse. The stench of twisted madness
, blood, and loosened bowels rose from the man's body in an almost palpable miasma of degeneracy.

He
suddenly felt an urgent need to find out what secrets this man had been hiding in his enormous home. He wiped his knife on the dead man's shirt, and then sheathed it. Jango felt the urge to go back to the car to get his stick, but he resisted the urge, and instead drew his pistol from under his left arm. A thought made him stop, and he reached down into the man's right pocket and removed what turned out to be a small remote device similar to what people used for their car alarms. It had two buttons on it, one red button, and one gray button. He decided to test it out before he went any further. Jango aimed the unit at the front door, and pressed the red button. He heard a “thump!” and he saw a locking mechanism turn as a large bolt shot home and sealed the door. He then pressed the gray button, and he heard the “thump!” again, and saw the locking mechanism turn back as the hefty bolt was pulled out of the wall. Satisfied, Jango pressed the red button again to lock the door, and pocketed the remote device.

Jango began to search the house methodically
. He went from room to room, and opened every door that he came to. He checked every room, and everywhere that he looked, the place seemed to be just an unlived in space; almost as if it was a model of what a home should be. There was no sense of life, no feeling that anyone had ever lived there. The house felt like nothing more than a killer’s disguise.

Jango headed for the staircase that
he had seen near the entryway to the front door, and when he reached the base of the staircase, he began climbing the stairs. Jango went up the stairs quickly, quietly wondering if there were any other threats in the home. He made it to the top of the stairs without incident, and looked down a long, brightly lit hallway.

Jango move
d slowly and quietly down the hallway. He stopped to check each door that he came to, but the rooms appeared to be the same dead spaces as the rooms that had been downstairs. The rooms looked un-lived in and empty of personality, until he came to the door at the end of the hall. Jango heard muffled moans coming from behind the door, and he noticed that there were heavy hasps on the outside of it. Jango quietly cocked his pistol, and undid the hasps that held the door closed.

Jango slowly opened the
door, and as he did, the soft moans grew louder. The sight that greeted Jango in that room froze the blood in his veins and the marrow in his bones. The room that he found himself standing in was a large room, easily 25' x 25', and every wall of that large room was lined with wire cages. They were the same kind of cages that people put their dog in when they are about to go on a long trip so that the dog would not be able to jump around in the vehicle. But instead of dogs being in the cages, the cages were full of young girls. All of the girls in the cages were naked, and it appeared that the bottoms of their cages were lined with newspapers.

At a quick glance
, Jango estimated that all the girls were around the same age. All of them were afraid, and they gazed at him with the middle-distance stare that Jango had worn on his own face when he was a child. He didn't know what he could do for the captive girls besides set them free.

Jango slowly made his way around the
room, unlocking the cages one at a time. He noticed as he unlocked the cages that each girl had two round, plastic dishes in their cage. Jango groaned inwardly as he deduced that the dishes were for food and water. When he had unlocked all the cages, a quick head-count showed that there were 23 girls in all. None of the girls came out of their cages, and Jango cursed under his breath, knowing that they were shell-shocked and traumatized by whatever the twisted Bernard Banks had done to them.

Jango walked back
to the doorway, and squatted back on his haunches. He was silent for a moment, thinking, and then he said, “That twisted mother-fucker isn't ever going to hurt you again. I damn near cut his fucking head off. He’s lying in a big ass pool of blood downstairs. It’s safe now.”

When
he told the girls that their tormentor was dead, he saw a glimmer of hope in some of the girls’ eyes. One girl, a petite brunette with welts on her shoulders that looked like whip-marks, climbed out of her cage and stood up.

“Is that true,
sir? Is…is The Killer dead?” The girl said.

He
didn’t know why the girl called Banks “The Killer”, but he was pretty sure the man was dead. “Hell yes it’s true,” Jango said. “Hell, I'll bring his fucking head up here if you want me to.”

Jango
didn't make eye contact with any of the girls, because he knew what it was like to be hurt, and scared. Eye contact at this point would come across as a threat. These girls were vulnerable and hurt, and he would be damned if he would add to their trauma.

Suddenly, t
he girl's eyes widened. Without thinking, Jango rolled forward, and drew his pistol as he did.

Jango came out of
his roll on one knee, and pointed his pistol at the space behind where he just had been. There was a large man standing in the doorway who looked like a bowling ball with legs and arms. He was wearing a padded suit like dog trainers wear when doing protection training with guard dogs, and heavy gauntlets that covered the backs of his massive hands. The man held a large revolver in one beefy hand, and it was hanging at his side. The other hand was upraised, with a heavy, knotted cudgel gripped tightly in his fist. The man would have brained Jango if it hadn’t been for the girl’s reaction, and now the man would never get another chance.

Jango shot the large man just above his belt line, and watched
as he dropped the cudgel and the revolver to double over and hold his stomach in agony. Jango rose fluidly to his feet, and walked over to the moaning man. Jango nudged the man's revolver to the side with his foot, and asked the girl whose widening eyes had warned him of the large man’s eminent attack, “Any more surprises you want to tell me about?”

Jango immediately felt like an
asshole as he saw the fear written plainly on the girl’s features. Jango consciously made an effort to soften his face, and said to the girl, “I'm sorry, kid. I'm not mad at you.”

The fear on the
girl’s face lessened, and she said, “No sir, there was never anyone else in the house. Not that I saw anyway. When Mr. Banks let people use us, he always took us to the other house, the one behind this house.”

The old
, familiar pulse of madness began to beat in Jango's temples, and he felt the coldness of his zombie-hatred retreat, and his need for vengeance retreat as the fires of his childhood rage rose to engulf him.

“
Used you, used you how? I mean, what was going on here?” Jango asked the girl in a voice that sounded like bones breaking and metal tearing.

“
The other man, not this one, he has these fights out behind his other house. He has a big corralling cage set up where people fight the zombies, and if they win, they to get to do whatever they want with one of us.” She hung her head and continued in a quieter tone, “And that man, that man right there, he fought those zombies all the time, and he got to use us. He always made it hurt. He wears that suit, and he even wins against four or five zombies.”

Jango looked down as he heard the large man start to chuckle.
He took a closer look at the man, at his shiny baldhead and the sex offender’s smile that was pasted across his sweaty face, and Jango made a decision. These girls were going to take theirs back.

“Any last words, fuck-stick?” Jango asked the gut-shot man. “If you want to pray
, now is a good time to do it, because you are about to have some serious hurt put on you.”

The huge man laughed
out loud, and said, “My Lord Jesus Christ absolves me of all my sins. So even if I die, I get to fuck little bitches like this for the rest of eternity. You can’t do anything to me. I’m The Killer, you pussy. Shit, you are one lucky punk-ass you were gone when Mr. Banks and me got back to the woods, ‘cause your ass was going to go in the Pit. He thought for sure you were going to turn into a groaner, but nope! You were gone when we got back.” 

Jango
smiled at the man, pulled his Spyderco knife from his front pocket, and opened it. He reached down and grabbed the big man by his right ear, and in one swift motion, he cut the man’s ear from his head, and tossed it onto his chest. The man screamed in a high falsetto note that made Jango smile, and the hot, acidic smell of urine filled the air as The Killer got his first taste of just desserts.

Jango leaned over the screaming man, and a maniacal grin spread across his face as he screamed along with The Killer.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Jango screamed into the big man’s pain-wracked face.

Spittle flew from
his lips as he shouted at the man in a woman’s voice that sounded like it was made of cyanide and sugar that had been laced with the patter of blood dripping on an abattoir floor, “This is the truth about The Killer, ain’t it, baby? You’re just a big old bag of screams under all that big, bad muscle, ain’t you?” Jango asked in the albino woman’s violence-soaked voice. There was the hard twang of the Deep South threaded through her poison croon as Jango spoke. “It ain’t how hard you are when you’re standing over top of someone that really matters, you fatty-fatty kiddie fucker. It’s how hard you are when someone’s standing over top of
you
that shows what you’re made of.”

Jango slapped the man on the wound that used to be an ear,
then pulled the spine cutter from its Kydex sheath on his belt, and slowly turned to face the room full of girls, all of whom had fully come out of their cages by then.

Jango was in full destroy mode, and the harsh lines of his killing face cause
d the girls to shrink back in fear. He forced a smile onto his face.

“No, no, no, no, no, you don't have to be afraid of me. Now,
I'm going to give you the option. You’ve got the choice. I've got two knives here, and if you want to, you can take yours back from this slimy, bald, sweaty pile of shit. All I ask is that you leave his brain and his spine alone. I want this pile of lunchmeat to be a zombie until the end of all things. He says his Lord will absolve him, well fuck that shit. He won’t get absolved if he doesn’t make the meeting. I will tie his wailing, undead ass up, and then lock him in a fucking closet.” Jango had spoken in his normal voice.

I
n Jango's mind, the only right thing to do as far as the girls were concerned was to let them take their pound of flesh from their tormentor; it was the only way that they could get back what had been taken from them. The simple truth was that no therapy or counseling session in the world would be as effective at that moment as what Jango had proposed to those girls. Revenge would go a long way toward healing their emotional trauma.

The
brunette that had been the first to come out of her cage stepped up to Jango hesitantly. He flipped the spine cutter in the air, and caught it by the tip of the blade. He held the knife out grip first to the girl. “Have at it. Chop that wood, girl,” was all that he said to her.

Jango flipped the Spyderco up in the air the same way and caught it by the blade. He held it out in front of the remaining girls grip first, his eyes looking at nothing in particular. As the fat
man’s screams began to fill the room, they cleaned the air better than any filter ever could, and some life began to come back into the girls' eyes.

A few of the girls looked at each other, and one pudgy blonde girl finally stepped forward, squared her shoulders, and took the knife from Jango's waiting hand.

One by one, the rest of the girls began heading toward where the big man lay screaming in agony as the girls took it all back. The meaty thump of blows and the hissing whisper of the blades cutting flesh and fabric combined with the fat man's hellish screams to create a symphony of righteous retribution.

Chapter 4:

An Army of Orphans

Several minutes after the
man’s screams had stopped, the girls finished their therapy session. He turned back to look at the girls. They were coated in blood and gore of every description, but their clean white teeth showed, smiling through the bloody masks that they wore. Their smiles told him that given time, the girls would be okay. At least by Jango’s standards of okay.

“
So how we all feeling?” Jango asked the girls.

A couple of the girls high-fived each
other, and a few of them gave each other hugs. They were completely unselfconscious about their nudity, and they intuitively seemed to know that Jango was not a threat to them.

“
So what really happened here?” Jango asked. “What's been going on? You said something about people using you.” Jango kicked the mutilated remains of The Killer and then continued, “You said this slimy sack of shit was one of them, but who else? Are there more? Where are they?” Jango’s questions came out rapid-fire in staccato bursts.

“
Yeah, there’s more. There’re a whole bunch of the son of a bitches,” a muscular looking girl with purple hair said. “They had some kind of militia before those things started coming around. You know, those zombies. Now they just do whatever they want. We were all hiding out at the Armory because our teacher had taken us there. Mrs. Watson, she said we'd be okay because there was food there and it was supposed to be safe. Then Mr. Banks showed up, and Mrs. Watson let him in.”

The
brunette who was first out of her cage cut in, “And then Mr. Banks, well, he just shot Mrs. Watson. Then those friends of his came in behind him. Then they took us all out of there and they loaded us on the bus. Mr. Banks drove us all the way here. That was two months ago. She hung her head sadly. “And I just know my family is all gone too. I don't even know what I’ll do.”

Jango’s
face appeared etched in stone as the girl finished speaking. He was thinking about this militia the girls were talking about. He figured that sooner or later, somebody, or even
several
somebodies would show up here looking for Bernard.

“
So what about this militia?” Jango asked. “What kind of militia are they? White Power? Fuck the government? Incest is best? Tell me what you all know.”

“
Didn’t you see the basement here?” A blonde-haired girl asked him. “They have all kinds of crazy Nazi stuff down there. They have guns, knives, and all our clothes too.”

“
Basement?” Jango asked. He had searched this house high and low, and not seen any sign of a basement. “Where is this basement?”

“
It's real hard to see unless you know where it is, because it's behind the bookcase. I will show you,” said a very small girl.

He
had to ask, “How old are you kids anyway?”

"
Fifteen," said several of them in unison. They looked at each other and smiled.

Jango was glad to see them
smile. It was a good sign. Children, even teenagers, had a natural resiliency to their minds and spirits. If that resiliency was tapped, and they were allowed to heal, the girls could go on to live decent lives.

Jango held out his hands, palms up, and made a
“gimme” gesture. The two girls that held the knives looked sad, but handed the knives back to him. He cleaned them off on the ragged remnants of his camouflage shirt, folded the Spyderco and pocketed it, and then sheathed the spine cutter.

As Jango
followed the girls back down the stairs, he asked, “So where'd he have these fights? You said he has some kind of cage or corral? Who all would fight in there besides the chubby chunk of fuck-meat back there?”

The muscular girl with purple hair
answered, “Well, some of the guys from the militia would fight but not very much because they were afraid of being bitten. Mr. Banks made people fight at least two of them. He said that our tight… Our tight little… He said they would have to work if they wanted a piece of us.” The girl jutted her chin out, as if daring him to judge her. Jango didn’t show anything on his face, and she continued. “Mostly it was The Killer, I mean, the chubby guy back there. But they would also catch dogs and put them in with the zombies and you could hear those poor dogs screaming. And they also caught people that were still human, and they put them in there. If they won they could use us. Some of them did, but the ones who didn’t, well, Mr. Banks just killed them. They were all supposed to come here tonight, and The Killer was going to fight five zombies at once. After the fight, Mr. Banks was going to let all of the militia guys do whatever they wanted with us tonight because he said he needed to keep them in line. He told us that pussy keeps men in line.”

Without preamble or explanation,
Jango started hurrying the girls out of the room. “Come on, come on, come on, let's go. We don’t want to get caught with our shit hanging out when those shit-bags come looking for their boss and his dead monkey.” Jango pointed at The Killer’s mangled corpse.

“
Are you going to get us out of here?” Asked the small girl who had volunteered to show him to the basement. She had a terrified expression on her face, and Jango knew it was because she didn’t want him to leave without her and her friends. She didn’t want to be abandoned.

Even as they walked, all the girls
’ faces turned toward Jango as they waited for an answer to the girl’s question. He kept walking for several paces before he answered. “No,” Jango replied. “You are going to help me kill every last one of those mother-fuckers. I can’t move all of you and still keep you safe. The world has never been kind to women or children, but now it is worse. I can’t take you with me, not on the Apocalypse Road. I’m running full-steam ahead, straight for the Reaper, and that road isn’t for you kids. So that means you are staying here, which also means that those shit-eating rapists need to get planted.”

A little more
than two months ago, all of these teenage girls had been on top of the world. The worst issue they might have been facing was who they should go to prom with, if their hair looked okay, or how they might cover up a little pimple before they went to hang out at the movie theater. Now, they had been raped, victimized, caged, and had gone Lord of the Flies on a giant rapist. Now he was asking them to help him kill an entire armed militia group. Jango knew what he was asking wouldn’t be easy for the girls, but he also knew that it had to be done. He knew those men had to die, otherwise these girls, and anyone else who tried to live around there would never be safe. Jango's code would not allow him to desert someone in need; he refused to just walk by. He still had to provide for their safety. In Jango's mind, it wasn't even an option; it just was.

They reached the bookcase that the
small girl had told Jango about. One of the girls pulled the spine on a purple book, the bookshelf clicked, and then swung silently outward. Behind it was a heavy, metal door, with a hefty bolt securing it. The girls all turned to look at him expectantly.

Jango looked confused for a split second, but then he remembered the remote device that had opened the front door. Jango quickly pulled it from his pocket, and pressed the gray button. There was an answering "thunk" and the sound of the bolt sliding back. Jango jerked the door open, and headed down the wide flight of well-lit stairs that was on the other side.

When Jango reached the bottom of the
steps, he found himself in a huge chamber full of guns, paintings, jewelry, knives, swords, and a vast variety of other valuables.

“
Get some clothes, and get dressed,” Jango barked at the blood-covered girls.

As the girls hustled to
follow his instructions, Jango carefully looked over the available weapons. He immediately noticed a large crate that seemed to be entirely full of .22 caliber ammunition. He swiftly searched all of the available firearms for anything in .22 caliber.

After several minutes of methodical searching, Jango
had managed to come up with ten Ruger 10-22 rifles. Each of the rifles had two clear plastic banana clips that had twenty rounds of ammunition already loaded into each clip. The two clips were taped together so that the ends of the clips that the rounds were fed out of faced away from each other.

Jango kept hunting, and found a small crate of double-barreled
12-gauge shotguns. Jango did not have to hunt around to find ammunition for the shotguns, because there was a shelf right near the crate that was loaded with all manner of 12-gauge ammunition. Jango swiftly and methodically cracked each double-barreled shotgun open, then loaded them each with double ought buckshot.

By the time
Jango was done, he had twenty shotguns in all, with both barrels loaded. He also had ten rifles with forty rounds per rifle. Jango looked around to see how the girls were progressing. When he did, he saw that they had all gotten dressed in ill-fitting camouflage clothing. The girls all wore lace up boots, and had clipped knives to the black canvas belts that they were using to hold up their baggy pants.

When Jango
had turned around to face the girls, they all straightened up, like soldiers would for an officer. He noted that the girls also appeared embarrassed. The girls were still used to the way things were, and he understood that their embarrassment stemmed from a fear that Jango would ridicule them for attempting to emulate him. The idea of ridiculing anyone who had decided to make a stand had never crossed Jango's mind. He felt nothing but respect for the warriors who now stood before him. Jango gave them each a nod of approval before hurrying them over to get their weapons.

“
Do any of you have any firearms training?” Jango asked. He looked around to see if anyone had given him an affirmative. None of them had.

“
Fuck it,” Jango said. “That training is overrated anyway. All you need to know is that the bullets come out of here.” He pointed at the muzzle. “You pull on this.” He pointed at the trigger. “To make the bullets come out. Oh, and you never shoot your friends.” He finished with a smile of encouragement. He just figured on pointing the girls at the militia members, and letting them send a hail-storm of lead their way. Well, that was half of his plan.

“You’re him, aren’t you?” The small girl asked, interrupting Jango’s thoughts.

“I’m who?” He asked the girl, genuinely confused by her question.

“You
’re the one that those men talked about. They heard stories on the radio about someone who’s called the Zombie Fighter.” She paused, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “The men and Mr. Banks said that the people who had seen the Zombie Fighter, seen what he did, well, they said that those people claimed that he was the Devil set loose on earth to do God’s work. They said that the Zombie Fighter would kill people just as fast as he killed zombies. They said that you can tell where the Zombie Fighter has been because where he walks, no evil is left behind and the ground is burned to glass. It’s you. I know it is, and we knew you would come to save us.”

Jango looked around him, stunned into silence by the girl’s speech. He was even more stunned to see that all of the girls nodded in
agreement as the small girl finished speaking.

The muscular girl spoke into the silence, “
Two months.” Her voice cracked with emotion as she spoke. “Two months of them doing whatever they wanted to us. At first, we all planned to kill ourselves. Sarah,” she pointed her chin at the small girl, “She found a little piece of broken glass when they took her out the first time. She hid it in her mouth, and we all decided to use it to slash our wrists.”

The
other girls nodded almost in unison as the muscular girl spoke.

“We figured we would do it at night, and have all night to bleed out. We would just pass it through the bars, one by one, until we were all
cut open and bleeding to death.” Emotion made the girl’s strong face tighten up, as if she was about to cry. She forced her emotions back, and continued. “The night we were going to do it, Melissa had been taken out.” She pointed to a tall, red haired girl. “Well, she came back, and as soon as the door was closed, she told us about a story she had heard on the short-wave radio that those a-holes always listen to. She told us about you. She told us the stories.” She hurriedly added, “Don’t you dare lie. Don’t you dare! We know it’s you. They said you were coming this way. The stories people told, they said that you were coming this way, and we just knew you would come. Those men were watching for you, and we knew you would come and kill them.” The strong girl gave way to her emotions, and cried unabashedly. Heart wrenching sobs heaved loose from her chest, bridged the gap between them, and slammed through the wall of Jango’s will.

He stepped close to the girl, and awkwardly put his arm around her shoulder. He patted her heavily muscled shoulder
while repeating, “It’s better now, it’s better now,” over and over until her sobs diminished.

“Look, I sure as shit won’t just desert you girls, okay? You all are unbelievably strong and fucking-
A awesome, but we don’t have time for a bunch of hugging and healing. We can either sit here talking about how we feel, or we can go shoot those twisted shit-biscuits into nasty, gross, piles of zombie-chow.” Jango paused for effect, and then asked, “So, who’s with me?”