The Age of Zombies: Sergeant Jones (19 page)

Casper nodded. He knew that whatever Jones was going through was just as tangled up as what he was going through. He didn’t want to get deep into his family history, either. Things had been rough with them lately. His kids were getting in a lot of trouble at school and with the law, and his wife didn’t seem to care anymore. But they still meant everything to him. His whole life revolved around them. He never claimed to be noble, honorable, or a good guy. But he loved his family. He was a faithful husband and a dedicated father. He possessed a silent, indestructible love for them.

“Let’s start drawing up our plans,” Casper said. “We’ve got to act quick. From what I know, these monsters have a plan and they’re not wasting any time.”

“You’ve been working with them?” Jones asked. He needed to know what he was getting into before taking any more steps.

“That’s right,” Casper said. “I’ll be square with you. I’m a hit man. I only kill those that deserve it.”

“Same here,” Jones admitted.

“Glad we’ve got something in common already,” Casper said. He smiled wryly at his macabre sense of humor. “I work for this guy named El Sagrado. He’s been dealing with these giants, these monsters, for the last couple months. They’ve paid him well. In turn, I’ve been a busy man.”

“A busy hitman,” Jones said. “Tell me something about the jobs you’ve been doing. What kind of people are you taking out?”

Casper shrugged. “I don’t read much into their lives,” he said. “That’d give me nightmares. I’d rather not know much about them. But, generally, they’ve got bad debts. Or it’s to settle a score.”

“And the increase in business. The hits you’ve been doing the past couple months, have they been any different?”

Casper was silent.

“You’ve got to be upfront with me,” Jones said. “We’re in this together.”

Casper stood up and chugged his Pepsi. He started pacing around the room. “I’m not proud of it, man. But the money was good. Damn good. A half million dollars good.”

“What’d you do for that kind of dough?” Jones said

“Damn, man. It was nasty. I’d call it genocide. For three straight nights they sent me out to different warehouses around L.A. When I would get there, I was asked to kill everybody inside. I was told that they were
vagos
, deadbeats to the cartel. They hadn’t paid their dues.”

“So you smoked them.”

Casper started sweating. His face blushed. “There were kids, too. Women, children, old men. About one fifty, two hundred people in each warehouse. After the killing, the giants came in and cleaned up. They sucked their bones dry. They ate everything, even the brains. Shit man, I think these are zombies.” Casper crushed the Pepsi can with a clench of his fist. “I guess all of this is karma, man. That’s what my brother said.”

Jones had to reassess his trust of this man. Who would murder innocents on that scale? The pay was good, sure. But at some point, one’s conscience would step in. But Jones also considered the fact that Casper was a trained killer. He had probably been doing it for upwards of twenty years. At a certain point, murder, even on such a horrific scale, means little besides the money that’s attached to it. Blood money. That’s what makes the world go round.

“You killed a couple of these zombies, too,” Jones said.

“That’s right,” Casper said. “The blood between Los Zetas and these zombies has soured. I killed a couple of these monsters. And now they got their revenge.”

Casper sulked and couldn’t look Jones in the eye. The Sarge stood up and walked over to Casper. Jones realized that working with Casper was the only chance that he’d be able to find his own family. “Forget the past,” Jones said. “We’re selfish bastards right now. What’s done is done. We’re gonna find our families. What do we have to do first?”  

Casper looked up with determination. His remorse evaporated, and resolve remained. “First thing’s first, we’ve got to get a hold of El Sagrado. He’s the one that got me in this mess. And he’s gonna be the one that gets our families back. He’s got intelligence on where these monsters are keeping low.” Casper walked over to the kitchen and tossed his empty Pepsi can into the garbage. “It’s gonna come with a price tag, though.”

Jones snuffed out his cigarette in a large oval crystal ashtray. He could tell that Casper knew a lot more than what he was letting on. This wasn’t a time to question allegiance, however. Any information would be good information. “Let’s call this El Sagrado,” Jones said. “We don’t have much time.”

Casper reached into his pocket and pulled out a burner phone. He started to dial.

“Hey, before you call,” Jones said. “What’s El Sagrado mean, anyways?”

“The Sacred,” Casper said. The phone call connected. Casper stepped into the other room and shut the door behind him.

Jones looked around Casper’s livingroom. The place was full of mementos of better times. The family kept the home incredibly neat and tidy. Everything had its place and was ordered in an even fashion. It reminded Jones of a film out of the seventies. The portraits along the wall showed a loving family. Casper, his old lady, and their three children looked happy. The kids were anywhere from a year to twelve years old, as far as Jones could tell.

The family also collected masks. There were examples from all different times and places. Jones recognized the Kabuki theater, shamanic headhunters, and classical Greek comedy and tragedy. He appreciated that this family, who lived by the gun, could also have a deep appreciation for human culture.

The call took longer than Jones had hoped. He got up and peeked out the window blinds. A couple Mexican kids zipped by on their bikes, laughing and calling out boyish insults as they chased each other down the quiet street. Jones could see himself living down here in South Gate. Not with Vanessa or Emma Jo. But if he was dealt cards that said he would be alone from here on out, this would be where he would go. He would be a stranger in a strange neighborhood. Nobody would know his name.

Just as Jones was getting comfortable with this idea, his phone rang. It was Wimpy. “It’s not a good time,” Jones said. “I’m hashing out some heavy stuff right now.”

“I just got to L.A.,” Wimpy said. “I’m here to help, Sarge. Just tell me where I need to be.”

“Check into a hotel for now,” Jones said. “Text me the details later.” Casper stepped back into the room. He didn’t like what he saw. Jones was standing by the family mantle, examining a wooden box, chatting on the cell phone. Jones quickly ended the call and pocketed the phone.

“Who was that?” Casper said.

“A buddy of mine. He was just checking in on me.”

Casper was hasty in his assessment of the situation. “You’re scoping my stuff,” he said. “I didn’t invite you all the way down here from Oregon so that you could poke around that box.”

Jones was embarrassed. He slowly placed the box back where it originally was.

“Anyways,” Casper said. “You’re probably wanting to know what El Sagrado had to say.”

Jones regained his composure. He could withstand the pressures of a battlefield, but couldn’t shake the embarrassment of invading Casper’s privacy. “That’s right,” Jones said. “What’d the dude say?”

A fiendish grin broke out on Casper’s face. “He’ll show us where the monsters are,” Casper said. “And he’ll get us wherever we need to go from there. But there’s a catch.”

“There’s always a catch,” Jones said. “What’s the guy want?”

“He wants one of these monsters alive,” Casper said. “He said that there’s a group of four or five of them up in the San Gabriel mountains. They’re staying in a cabin up there. We’re to capture as many as we can, and bring them back to El Sagrado alive.”

“He wants them working for him,” Jones said. “Does this maggot got puke for brains?” Jones hadn’t riffed on random insults in a while. It felt good getting back into the swing of being a Sergeant. He was mentally prepared to lead this mission. Something switched inside him once Casper gave him the details of El Sagrado’s demands.

Casper chuckled at the insult. He had a hunch that Jones was military. He was wondering when it would shine through. “Listen man,” Casper said. “We’re gonna go up in those mountains and bring Sagrado what he wants. I don’t care how stupid it all sounds.”

“Stupid? Stupid?” Jones said. “Stupid doesn’t scratch this one, son. Ol’ Sagrado’s got saggy balls where his brains should be. And by the sound of it, they’re spitting blanks.” Jones lit another cigarette. It calmed his nerves. “I’ve got a grunt from my fireteam that just landed at LAX. We’ll pick him up on the way. Show me your arsenal. I know you’ve got one stashed away in this place of yours.”

Casper wordlessly waved Jones into a back room. He pushed a bookshelf to the side and opened a panel that was built into the wall. Inside the panel was a red switch. He flipped it. Jones heard a loud rumbling noise coming from beneath him. Casper had a secret stash of all sorts of contraband down in a corridor beneath the basement.

Cabinets on either side of the corridor were built from floor to ceiling and stored shotguns, automatic rifles, pistols, grenades, and even a couple rocket launchers. Each weapon was categorized by caliber, utility, and design. Beneath each weapon was another drawer that housed its respective ammunition. Jones felt like a kid in a candy store. He picked out two pistols, two automatic rifles, and a rocket launcher. For some reason he was drawn to the Russian models.

Casper complimented him on these choices. He picked out his own weapons, along with weapons for Wimpy, and the two men lugged them back upstairs. They needed to keep their choices simple but strong. They knew what they were up against, but at the same time had no idea what to expect. The men packed a couple bologna and American cheese sandwiches with a spread of mayo and mustard for the ride. Casper grabbed a six pack of Pepsi from his garage’s fridge.

While Jones finished packing in the living room, he noticed something strange. Something was wriggling around on the thick shag carpet. He looked a little closer, and saw that it was one of the white worms. He squeezed it between his thumb and forefinger, and brought it closer for inspection.

He was usually disgusted by the little worms, but this one fascinated him. Jones found that the worm’s head was beautifully symmetrical. Its skin was silky smooth. For a moment the world went quiet, and Jones was utterly captivated by the insect.

Casper walked in on Jones and startled him. “What you got there?”

Jones tossed the worm back onto the carpet. He felt violated by the sudden invasion of his trance. He felt confused, too. He was supposed to hate these things. They were leeches that clinged to wherever the zombies went. And strangely, he felt incredibly intimate with the worm. “Ah, nothing,” Jones said. “Just a worm. I killed it.”

“Alright, good,” Casper said. “Hate bugs myself. Let’s get this show on the road.”

“Hooah,” Jones said.

They loaded up Casper’s Jeep, a different model than the Sarge’s, and took off to the airport. They listened to an oldies station on the radio and didn’t say a word. The wind blew through their hair and they both felt free. The sun was setting and the sky was infused with golds and pinks. The two men thought long and hard about their families, and everything that had brought them to this point.

The prospect of meeting death didn’t phase them. In fact, this very moment was the distillation of a life had been lived to the fullest. Neither man held onto any regrets. They only wanted to free the innocent loves of their lives.

Jones admired the city of Los Angeles in an entirely new light. The sprawling mass of concrete was a web that held millions of hearts together as one. He wasn’t usually prone to these types of fanciful thoughts, but the air was light and the mood one-pointed. His mind felt like part of the painted sky. He remembered back in Afghanistan how Roddy would talk about these sublime moments. He never could never get on the same level as Roddy until now.

The LAX airport was their destination. And from there, the mountains.

Jones was ready for anything.

And anything was ready for Jones.

Chapter Eleven

Zoruth: God of the Orobu

Zoruth. The sacred name of the highest ruler of the Orobu race. His name meant dream eater, master of the world. He was an ancient zombie, and he was the same zombie that appeared in the Sarge’s dream.

His chamber was quiet. Zoruth stepped out of a pool full of piping hot water. He mentally prepared himself for the task at hand. A nice soak in the waters, which were heated naturally from a deep underground source, calmed his mind and nerves. So many years, so many stories. He had no regrets.

It was all coming to an end now. Or was it a new beginning? The entirety of the Orobu race depended on him for their orders. He was the telepathic center of every single one of his subjects. And it was time to pass the mantle on.

The pool was carved out of limestone. Zoruth spent many years watching the the pool grow deeper and deeper into the rock. Water eats limestone at a glacial pace. It takes thousands of years for water to wear it down, and Zoruth seen it corrode the stone this deep. He mused as he looked back at the pool, remembering the first time he set foot in its shallow waters. It was now hundreds of feet deep. The waters reflected the depth of his entire memory.

This was the pool where Zoruth retreated from his duties as the leader of his race. This was where he regenerated his body, keeping it alive against the wretched onslaught of time. His naked body reflected in the pool’s dark waters, which were lit by two torches attached to the tunnel’s wall.