The Age of Zombies: Sergeant Jones (8 page)

Grantha chuckled to himself. “Your insults are ever so cutting. Listen, the kid won’t be coming out here now. That’d just be cruel. I have better plans for him. But I will invite the women out here. I want them to make the decision between themselves as to who will take you out of your misery.”

The bull man motioned to a couple of the soldiers. They nodded and hustled over to the entrance of the bus. They each dragged one woman by the wrist, their bodies sliding across the hot asphalt like butter over a burnt steak. The soldiers flung the women before the bull man.

“On your feet,” Grantha said. “And face each other.”

Savannah spit at the soldier that hovered over her. Gloria kicked the shin of her soldier. Most men will crumble at the first sight of real danger. And most women will claw at the last remnants of life until there is no more. These two women were not going to go down easy.

“Rise up,” Grantha said. “And speak your mind.”

Gloria shot up from the asphalt and rushed the bull man. She brandished a pocket knife and stuck it into the side of his abdomen. Grantha didn’t flinch. He allowed the attack. Gloria was nothing more than a fly to him. A pest. She twisted the knife and stabbed Grantha again in the thigh. Grantha kicked Gloria off from him. She went flying and crashed hard.

Savannah stood up and brushed herself off. “Somebody’s gonna come driving up here any minute,” she said. “And they’re gonna want to know what’s going on. And they’re gonna call the cops. And when the cops get out here, you’re done. They can send cops and sheriffs from all over.”

The soldiers laughed as a group. Grantha motioned for them to hush. “Your idle wishes don’t interest us,” he said. “We delight in real drama. Tell Gloria how it was to take Chris’s cock. Tell her in great detail how you took him inside of you. You harbor his spawn in your womb. Go ahead, Savannah. Let Gloria know what that’s like.”

Tears streamed down Savannah’s cheeks. She looked Gloria straight in the eye. “I am not going to bring you down, Gloria. I am not going to kill Chris. I am not going to falter now. I have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Gloria pushed herself up from the asphalt. “And you betrayed me. You betrayed my home and my family. You are a jezebel. Your own husband was a coward. You expect me to believe that you will stay strong? Drop the facade, bitch. One of us is going to die.”

This delighted the soldiers. Two machetes came flying through the air and crashed down in front of each of the women. Gloria was quick to pick hers up. Savannah hesitated. But once she got a good look at the spark of hate in Gloria’s eyes, Savannah knew she had to defend herself. She picked up her machete, and gripped it tight.

Gloria rushed Savannah with with the look of a wild banshee in her eyes. Savannah let out a shrill cry and held her machete high. Gloria’s tactic was pure hate. Savannah’s was to strike at the opportune time. The muggy Kansas air lay like a blanket covering everybody in sweat. The heat fueled Gloria’s rage. All eyes were on the fate of these two women.

“Whoooooooore!” Gloria flailed her machete as her shoes smacked the asphalt making their way to the target. “Diiiiiiiie!”

Savannah dug her feet in for the attack. She dodged Gloria’s frenzy, and brought her machete down on her opponent’s spine. The cut to Gloria proved instantly fatal. Nobody survives a severed spinal cord. Savannah collapsed on top of Gloria’s body. The dead woman spasmed. Gloria was most certainly dead, but her nerves buzzed with shock. Savannah heaved a sigh of relief.

Grantha lifted her from the ground. “You did well Savannah,” he said. “Now on to your next task.” He motioned for one of the soldiers to bring Chris to him. “This man is your lover. I want you to make love to him now. In front of us.”

Chris and Savannah stood face to face as lovers for the first time in public. Their trysts had always been in private: musty closets, spare bedrooms, dim offices, empty churches. They felt naked in front of each other out in the muggy Kansas air. A flutter of strange joy lifted through Savannah’s gut and up to her heart. They were free to love each other now. The violent deaths of their respective spouses were awful, but Savannah saw that as the Lord’s will. She tried to speak but her throat constricted and tears welled up in her eyes. They embraced. They held each other for a good minute before Grantha violently pulled them apart. Chris and Savannah were nothing but rag dolls compared to this monster. He tossed them to the side. They were both sprawled out on the hot asphalt.

“That’s enough love to last me a long time,” the bull man said. “Now that that’s done, I want Savannah to kill Chris. If she doesn’t do it, we’ll kill the kids. I’ll give her a minute. Starting now.”

“No, no, no!” Chris shouted. “I love this woman. And I will die for her. But before I do, I ask for one more embrace.”

Grantha was impressed and perplexed at the same time. He never understood human love. How idiotic and inspiring it was at the same time. “Go ahead,” Grantha said. “Have your last embrace.”

Chris picked Savannah up from the asphalt. He held her in his arms tight for as long as Grantha would allow. But he kept his eyes open for an opportunity to turn the tide. He saw that each of the soldiers had an automatic rifle slung across their back. If he could charge one of them, jump on their back, and fire enough rounds to do some serious damage there could still be a possibility of survival. Chris held Savannah tight and whispered in her ear.

“I love you,” he said. “It’s time to make our move.”

Grantha had seen enough. He stomped towards them. Chris waited until Grantha was ten feet away. In a sudden move Chris threw Savannah to the ground and rushed a soldier who flanked him to the right. Chris got onto the soldier’s back and attempted a choke hold while fumbling around with the rifle. He managed to get a burst of fire off, but the rounds went straight into the ground.

The soldier quickly subdued Chris. Without any orders or hesitation the soldier took Chris’s head into his hands and jerked it as hard as he could. The snap crippled Chris instantly. Savannah was ravaged by her lover’s death. She dug her hands into the asphalt, breaking her nails, and wailed into the blue Kansas sky.

“Silence wench,” Grantha said. “We’re not going to kill you now. But we are taking the kids. We’ve got orders to keep them alive.”

This was the final straw. Savannah wasn’t going to give up anything else. She clenched her fists and gritted her teeth. “I’m not leaving my son,” she said. “There’s nothing that will take me from my son.”

The campers on the bus were still peering out through the windows. They had seen everything. They were an audience to bloody drama of a nature that nobody had seen on the soil of the United States of America. Only a couple kids cried. Most just watched in awe. None of them thought ahead about what was in store for them. The drama of it all completely enraptured their minds. The violence blunted their emotions.

Grantha walked along the bus and tapped the windows. As he walked the kids ducked down to avoid his stare, his wrath. “You won’t have to worry about these kids Savannah,” he said. “We’ll take good care of them now.”

Savannah stood on the black asphalt with witchy eyes and a scowl. She breathed in and out rhythmically. Each breath built upon the one before until her gut started to emit this guttural growl. The growl built its pitch into a scream. She screamed and screamed until her throat couldn’t handle anymore.

Two soldiers subdued her and carried her to a Humvee. Once there they placed a chloroform soaked rag over her nose and mouth. She was out in short time. Another soldier came to inspect her body. He fiddled around in one of the Humvee’s compartments and brought an envelope. He tapped it a couple of times, and dug into it. The soldier pulled out a white worm and rested it beneath Savannah’s nose. It poked around her left nostril, and wiggled its way inside, disappearing into the the dark cavern.

It wasn’t long before a Sikorsky CH-53E Super Stallion transport helicopter arrived on the scene. The soldiers loaded the children onto the chopper and evacuated. The whole operation, from spike strip to evacuation, was over within thirty minutes.

Unbeknownst to the soldiers, there was a witness to everything that had transpired. A Mexican farmhand happened to be walking out in an adjacent corn field when he first heard Jacob’s bloody cries. The farmhand ducked in the cornfield and watched it all go down. After the soldiers evacuated, he was the first to come across what had transpired on the hot Kansas asphalt that morning. He neglected to report it to authorities out of fear of his own legal status in the United States. But he had photographic evidence of everything.

Twenty minutes later a station wagon carrying a vacationing family from Wisconsin hit the spike strip. The father pulled the vehicle over and told everybody to get out. The teenage son saw the bus up ahead and went up to investigate. His first reaction to the bloody scene was to purge his guts.

He explored the bus and found nothing but empty lunch pails. A sad reminder of the innocence that was once on board. He walked back to his family, who were moaning about the Kansas heat and the endless cornfields. The boy was shaking. His face was blank and white as a ghost. He stuttered what he had just saw.

It was another hour before federal authorities arrived. They closed off the small rural highway to any and all traffic. They reported the incident back to headquarters in D.C. They scoured the area for witnesses, but came up empty. The Mexican farmhand never said a word about what went down that morning.

But he had pictures.

And a pictures is worth a thousand words.

Chapter Five

Have a Bourbon Down at The Small Tavern

Jones mustered a grunt and nod.

Penny poured a shot of bourbon and cracked a cold PBR. She slid the drinks across the bar counter. Her fire red hair looked great, and her sharp green eyes sparkled. “Ain’t nothing a shot and a chaser can’t handle.”

“That’s the truth,” Jones said. One calloused hand picked up the bourbon, the other wrapped around the cold beer. He threw back the shot and guzzled the beer. “If it wasn’t for you, I’d have to actually get my ass to a shrink.”

Penny bent over the bar counter ever so slightly. She put on her devilish grin, the one that never failed to get a smile out of any guy. Her long, fiery red hair framed her breasts perfectly. “I charge a fair rate, I think.” Penny bent over just a little more. She sucked air into her lungs, causing her breasts to swell. They pressed tight together and bulged out. Cheap tricks, perhaps. But she could always count on them.

They weren’t working on Jones. He normally loved Penny’s robust curves. He loved Vanessa, so although he always looked, he never touched. Vanessa admired Penny’s breasts just as much as he did, so she never made him feel guilty about it. But tonight they could’ve been bags of dirt for all he cared. Even after the events of the previous afternoon, he didn’t have the desire to pick up on Penny. He imagined inviting her to a motel tonight, and giving her the ride of her life. But he couldn’t. He just didn’t have it in him.

He took another swig of his beer. “Ever have crazy fucking dreams?” he asked. “Like, next level nightmare shit?”

Penny’s green eyes lit up. “This one time, three Marines showed up in my dream. They were ripped, ready, and naked.”

Jones held up his hand and gestured for silence. “That sounds like a hellish nightmare,” he said. “Marines, I feel bad for you. But I’m sure you loved it, babe. No, I mean, I’m talking about a real nightmare. One that you couldn’t shake.”

Penny straightened her posture and tended to some dirty beer glasses. “You know, can’t say that I have. It’s funny, Jones. In the eight years you’ve been coming into this bar, I’ve never known you to talk about your dreams.” She lifted a glass and gave it a huff and wiped it with a white rag. “Let alone your nightmares. Something must be bothering you. How about you dish it out.”

“Another shot,” Jones said. Penny poured a double, and placed it in front of the Sergeant. Jones threw it back and slammed the shot glass on the counter. “Damn that’s good bourbon. Alright, so like I said, this dream was absolutely horrible. I mean, I haven’t been able to sleep since then.” Jones gulped his PBR. “I don’t even know where to begin, Penny. It’s such a big fucking mess.”

“Let’s start from the top,” Penny said. “Just tell me the first thing you saw.”

“I’m staring straight into the eyes of…” He cut himself short. He winced as he remembered the scene in his bedroom that afternoon.

Penny was listening and kept on cleaning the beer glass in her hands. “At what?” she said. “I didn’t catch that last part.”

Jones slid his shot glass back to Penny. She knew to fill it again. Penny wanted Jones drunk enough to tell the story of his nightmare completely unfettered. She poured the bourbon, and slid it back over to Jones. He moves his thumb around its rim. “So I’m in this room. It’s a familiar room, so at first I’m not fazed or anything. In fact, it looks like my bedroom. I smell something strange, but there’s nothing in the room that I can see, other than the bed, the dresser, the nightstand.”

Penny was skeptical. The nightmare sounded like a cover for something Jones really saw. But she’d play along for now. “Alright, so you’re in your bedroom. What’s the scary part?”

Jones threw back his shot.
 
“I’m not going to lie to you Penny,” he said. “What I went through wasn’t a dream. But God damn, it was a nightmare. I don’t even know why I’m hurt like this, Penny. I’m a tough guy, I’ve seen shit that no man should ever see. But this hurts. I feel twisted up inside.” Jones paused and turned away from Penny. “I can’t even say it. And I don’t think I really should right now. You’ve got enough that you’re dealing with.”