Jango's Anthem: Zombie Fighter Jango #2 (6 page)

Chapter 7:

Beware the Abyss

The speedometer quickly reached over
a hundred miles per hour, and Jango made it to the filling station in less than three minutes. He skidded into the parking lot of the abandoned gas station, and smiled when he saw a large fuel delivery truck that had two large gasoline tankers attached to it. Quickly, he made his way over to the truck and found the fuel outlet on the rear tank. He looked around and spotted the welded steel pipe on the bottom edge of the large tank. Jango quickly ran over undid a strong elastic cord that held a small plastic cap over the end of the steel tube. He smiled as he found what he had been looking for: the hose that would connect to the fuel outlet on the rear of the tank. Dragging the four-inch diameter hose out of the steel tube, he ran around the back. Attaching the hose was easy since it used a simple butterfly screw to secure the hose. Once attached, he simply pulled the lever and gasoline began pouring out of the far end of the hose. Jango had left the hose trailing behind him, which caused the fuel to disgorge underneath the other tank. The fuel slowly trickled back down the parking lot and toward the road. Noticing that the openings to the underground tanks were open, he took the time to remove all four of the caps from them.

Jango ran back to his car, and cut the body loose from the rear of the car. Then he heaved the body up over his head, and ran toward the cab of the fuel truck. When he was about ten feet away, he flung the body as hard as he could at the side of the cab. When it struck the side of the truck, the body splattered fluids everywhere. Wasting no time, he quickly climbed up into the cab and slammed the seat back forward, and then pulled the lever and drove the seat forward to strike the horn. The seat hit the end of its rails, but the seat back had missed the horn by bare inches. Cursing, he climbed back down out of the cab. He looked around, but could find nothing that would suit his purpose. Knowing he had only moments before the zombie horde would be upon him, and without a moment to spare, Jango began a butcher's work. He pulled the razor-sharp LMK from its sheath on his hip and began flaying the skin from the body of the former Mr. Banks. With the razor-sharp blade of the custom knife, Jango peeled great strips of skin and flesh from the cold body, which he then flung up against the wall of the filling station, and onto the glass of the window. The gobbets and strips of meat stuck and slid as they hit the glass windows and the brick wall of the gas station. By the time he finished his task, he had turned the storefront into an abattoir that would be sure to draw the horde of zombies into his trap. Jango paused for a moment as he remembered an old proverb that warned people about looking into the abyss. He shrugged his shoulders, and said with a grin, “Needs must, when the zombies are at your door.”

Jango quickly ran to his car and grabbed a handful of paper towels
, which he duct-taped to a box of shotgun shells. He left himself a strip of tape about 18 inches long, which he folded in half length-wise so that there would be no adhesive showing.  He quickly twisted the paper towels into a rope, and frayed the end with his fingers until it was fuzzy. The finished result looked almost like a flower. He jumped back in his car, and drove it around to the back of the building. He put the vehicle in park, but left it idling as he ran back around the side of the building so he could see the zombies when they arrived.

Jango pulled
the butane lighter out of his pocket as he waited. He looked around and made sure that his way would be clear, so that when he was ready to leave there would be no surprises. The portion of the parking lot that he had parked the vehicle in was out of sight from the front, but led straight to Main Street, which came down from the casino that was perched high on top of the hill.

He
decided that he would simply drive down the street, and turn left on the 69, which he would take south all the way to the I-17. Jango had fixated on Phoenix, and that was where he would be headed when he finished his work at the filling station.

In a few
moments, the screeching army of undead were pouring around the side of the mountain, and rushing the front of the gas station. The volume and pitch of their unearthly wails was almost too much for him to bear. Even against the horror of their screams, Jango held his position until he felt it was time to act. He lit the flower with his disposable lighter, and watched the paper towel burst into flame. Quickly stepping around the edge of the building, he whirled the weighted flaming mass around his head twice before launching it in the direction of the zombies. The flames engulfed the paper towel, and weighted by the five rounds of 12gauge buckshot, the package flew in a high arc and landed directly beside the fuel truck in the very midst of the zombie horde.

The moment the flaming projectile had left
his hand, he sprinted back to his vehicle, jumped in, slammed the door, put the vehicle into gear, and then pushed the accelerator to the floor. The tires squealed all the way to the end of the street. He tapped the brake when he reached the end of the street, and wrenched the steering wheel to his left as he gunned the engine. The big car revved, and then accelerated hard. He was a mile away before the tanker blew.

When the tanker truck
exploded, Jango felt it as much as heard it. The thick, oily smoke of burning gasoline rose high into the air in an ugly black column. There were four more explosions as the underground tanks blew, and each of the new explosions was far more concussive than the explosion of the tanker truck. Smiling, he began to hum a little tune as he drove south toward the I-17, which would take him to the heavily populated metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona.

Chapter 8:

Us and Them

Less than two hours after
he had burned several thousand zombies to a crisp in the gas station parking lot of the Indian reservation that nestled between Prescott and Prescott Valley, Jango found himself nearing the town of Black Canyon City. Some instinct, like a twitch in his mind, made him decide to take the turn off for Black Canyon City. His decision turned out to be a fortuitous one.

As
he took the off ramp and followed the wide, looping right turn, he spotted movement up ahead at the junction that would lead into downtown Black Canyon City. Once his eyes had zeroed in on the movement, he saw what appeared to be seven men dragging a woman out of her car. Jango felt the cold touch of the beast in his mind, and his foot, as if it had a mind of its own, pressed the accelerator of the large sedan. The car surged forward like an extension of his cold, hard rage, and headed straight toward the confrontation.

When
he was about a hundred feet away from what was happening, he lifted his foot off the accelerator, and allowed the large car to coast silently forward. There were seven men in the group. One of the men held a petite woman who struggled and fought against him. In the meantime, another of the men was busy ripping the woman's skirt from her legs as she flailed them in an attempt to defend herself. The other five men were slightly off to the side, and they stood with their backs to him as they watched the drama unfold. Jango angled the silently moving car so that it was aimed directly at the five men who stood off to the side. When he was twenty feet away, he gunned the car and slammed into three of the men like a bowling ball hitting bowling pins. The two men he had missed were now temporarily cut off from their friends by the bulk of the car.Jango immediately pressed the brake, and put the car in park. He grabbed his stick off of the passenger seat, opened his door, and leapt out of his car.

The two
men, the ones who had been intent on their struggling victim, reacted sluggishly to his appearance. Jango took advantage of their shock.

He
moved swiftly toward the two men who had been attacking the woman. His feet almost seemed to glide across the asphalt as Jango moved in to attack the would-be rapists. The one who had been intent on ripping the woman’s skirt off reached his right hand toward the holster that rode high on his right hip, but the man was too slow. Jango's body uncurled in a blur of motion as he unleashed a lightning fast stick punch with his right hand that struck the man on the side of his elbow. There was a rending snap, followed by the man's screams.

Jango had already brought the stick back to his ready position, and slid forward to strike the other attacker in the head with a left-handed stick punch.
Without pausing, he swung around to see where the other two men had gone.

The two who
he had missed with his car had come around the back end of the sedan, and each of them held a pistol. The men both wore the confident expressions of two people who believed that everyone would wet themselves with fright when braced by armed men. But Jango lived to disappoint.

In a series of movements
that were almost too fast to follow, Jango slung his stick at one of the men with frightening velocity, took ukemi, drew his pistol in the middle of his roll, and shot the other man in the groin.

His
stick, in the meantime, had struck the other man on his cheekbone and completely crushed the side of his face. Both of the men screamed in agony as the pain of their wounds slammed home.

The beast roared in Jango’s mind, and links in the chains of
his will began to stretch and crack. Jango echoed the beast’s roar. He raised his face to the heavens, and his roar rose toward the sky like an ancient and savage ballad that sang of hidden truths. The dog added his voice to the song, and the albino woman followed suit. The resulting sound was rage, ruin, slit wrists and bed-sheet nooses. He felt himself slipping into a darkness of the spirit, and he forced his way back toward control, and then slowly forged anew the chains of his will that held the beast in check.

Jango felt a movement behind him, and he ducked as he spun around to see what it was. He had turned around just in time to see the woman who
had been assaulted slashing at the man who had ripped her skirt from her body. The man had grabbed his pistol with his left hand, and Jango assumed that the man had been about to shoot him in the back when the woman had struck. She had given the man a series of shallow cuts, none of which were life-threatening, but they had been enough to keep the man from shooting him.

As he assessed the woman,
Jango immediately noticed that she had male genitalia, but didn’t give it any thought since the information meant nothing to him. A person was a person in his mind, and good people were such a rarity in his world that he refused to limit those whom he might help or befriend by things like gender, race, or sexual orientation. He judged people based on their behavior, because that was what told the truth.

As
he walked toward the man who had just tried to shoot him, he glanced over to assess any injuries the woman might have. She had some abrasions on her knees from the road, but otherwise seemed relatively unscathed by her ordeal. She panted with fear and exertion as she gripped the knife like it was her entire world.

“Thanks,” Jango
told her as he turned back toward the two men who had drawn down on him.

The man who
had been shot in the groin had started to gibber and cry at the same time as he clutched his ruined crotch with both hands. The other man lay where he had fallen. His cheek was caved in, and his eyes were open. As Jango drew closer, he could see that the man’s pupils were different sizes, and that his breath was ragged and shallow. He picked his stick up from the ground, and snapped the stick down in a move that he called “The Finisher.” His stick turned the top of the man’s head into a canoe-like shape, and it killed the man instantly.

After giving the groin-shot man final mercy, Jango turned back to the moaning
man whose arm he had broken, and slowly walked toward him. As he stood over top of the whimpering attacker, he asked the woman, “Would you like to do the honors ma'am?”

“
What, what do you mean?” The woman asked in a voice that was scratchy and tight with fear. She clutched her knife even more tightly, never taking her eyes off Jango, and leaned over to get the ruined remnants of her skirt.

He
looked at her for a moment, then drew his foot back and sunk a powerful kick into the man’s genitals. He curled up in the fetal position, and Jango withdrew his foot just as the man vomited in pain. As the man lay writhing and moaning in a puddle of vomit and blood, Jango turned back to the woman and said, “That's what I mean.”

The woman managed to give
him a weak smile, and shook her head as she tried to cover her exposed genitals with the ragged remnants of her skirt. Jango noticed her trying to cover herself, and looked over at the man whose head he had smashed just moments before. The man wore a pair of loose fitting black sweatpants that had a draw-string on the front. He swiftly and efficiently removed the pants from the man and then took them over to the woman. He kept his head turned to the side as he held the sweatpants out to the woman.

“
Thank you,” The woman said in a small voice as she accepted the pants from him.

While the woman got dressed,
he walked back over to the man who still lay moaning in his own vomit, and calmly brought his stick down on the man's temple. The man died instantly. Jango stood looking down at the twisted human, and remembered what it was like when the twists had been looking down at him. He had been dealing with this kind of human for as long as he could remember. He found himself wondering how this man could look so similar to himself, yet be so evil as to attack and rape a woman.

“Are these human zombies a different species than me?”
He asked out loud. After a moment of rumination, Jango shrugged and turned back to see if the woman had finished getting dressed yet.

He
saw that she had gotten dressed, and that she was standing and staring at him with wide, almond shaped eyes. He was genuinely surprised to see that the look on her face was not disgust, fear, or revulsion; the look on her face appeared to be an expression of gratitude. He was somewhat confused, and was unsure whether he had read her expression correctly. His confusion ended when the woman spoke.

“
Thank you so much, sir. Thank you for saving me,” the woman said in a honey-smooth voice that was laced with the slow twang of a soft, southern drawl. “I don't know what I would've done if they had done, well, what they were going to do.” Then she added in a whisper, “I would have killed myself, I swear it.”

The woman abruptly stepped toward Jango
. He tensed and began to raise his stick. The woman stopped in her tracks, fear etched plainly on her beautiful face. The knife she still held fell from her nerveless fingers. She raised her hands up to hip level, and turned her palms toward him. “I don't want to hurt you, honey,” the woman said. “Not ever, not in a million years.”

Then, as if he had been told
out loud, Jango knew that the woman was one of his own. He knew she wasn’t as broken, or as volatile as him, but with the unerring instinct of the outcast, he knew that she was one of his own. Someone had hurt her badly at some point in her life, and she had been just as shocked that Jango had come to her aid as he had been at her expression of gratitude.

“
My name’s Vanessa, sugar, what's your name?” The woman asked as she looked at him with her large, liquid looking brown eyes that appeared completely free of guile or deceit.

Jango looked at Vanessa for a moment
and thought about some of the hard roads that he had traveled in his lifetime. He imagined what it must have been like for Vanessa to walk down some of the same roads that he had travelled. After a moment of silence, he answered her. “My name is Jango, and it’s nice to meet you, ma’am.”

Vanessa smiled as Jango spoke, and
she replied. “So what do you do besides running over scoundrels with your car, and rescuing damsels in distress?” Her smile grew, and she said, “You are like a modern-day knight of the Round Table, honey!”

He
smiled back at her, and then asked, “What are you doing here in Black Canyon City? I mean, you shouldn’t be out driving around by yourself like there’s nothing to fear! It's been over two months since Z-Day, and you should be hiding out somewhere safe. See, now the human zombies are starting to come out to hunt and they are just as bad, hell, maybe even worse, than the goddamn goobers.”

Vanessa's eyes
filled with tears, and she looked down at her shoes. “I was in Camp Verde, and I was nice and safe there. One of my friends has, I mean,
had
a cabin with solar power, a well, and even a creek nearby. Everything was great, but then one of my friends turned into one of those things and started tearing my friends to pieces! I just ran. I didn’t know what else to do, I just got in my car and ran away. That was two weeks ago. I have been kind of hiding out in campgrounds, and keeping my head down. But I ran out of my medication about five days ago, and I need that medication, because I'll get sick if I don't have it.”

“
What kind of medication?” He asked her.

Vanessa continued looking at her feet, as she said in a small voice
that dripped with pain. “I take hormones, and androgen blockers.” Then she looked up at Jango and added, “I was born a female, I just didn't have the body to match, yet. The medicine I take helps me have the right body for who I am.”

The woman
snorted bitterly as she anticipated disgust or rejection from Jango, and said, “Do you know how hard it is to not be able to be yourself? To never feel whole, and sometimes not even feel alive? I've always known I was in the wrong body, the wrong place, and sometimes even the wrong world. Do you know what those men said when they saw my, my…” She cleared her throat of the pain that had welled up and threatened to drag her into oblivion as she whispered, “They said, “No problem, just flip it over and get that ass.”

Tears fell from her eyes as she whispered.
“I feel so alone sometimes that I think I could die just from the pain of that loneliness.”

He
knew exactly what it was like to not feel whole, and to not feel alive. He also knew what it was like to not be able to be himself. He knew exactly how it felt to live hidden behind a false smile. He would smile on the outside, while inwardly he screamed and tore at the flesh of his own soul. Jango's song, the song of his life, was the same sad tune as Vanessa's own song; it just had different words to it.

“
So you're looking for some pills, and that's why you came here,” Jango said. “Well, did you find any?”

Vanessa sniffled, and looked up at
him. “No, the pharmacies here have been completely ransacked.”

Jango looked at Vanessa,
at her slight frame, almond shaped eyes, honey-colored skin, and long flowing brown hair. He just knew that if he walked away from her she would be dead before the week was out.