The Zombie Wars: The Enemy Within (White Flag Of The Dead Book 8) (8 page)

Zim proved to be different than I thought.  I expected to see some sort of nasty, pasty-faced loser who probably had no friends in the world before the zombies. What I got was a young man of about twenty-five, with model good looks, and piercing dark eyes.

“Well, Zim, it seems like your plan of unleashing a horde of zombies on me just came to a crashing halt,” I said, casually aiming my rifle at his chest while Charlie tied his hands with a zip tie.

“I still have friends.  When they see I’m not back, they’ll let the whole horde loose.  You’ll see.  Whatever is left of the population around here is toast,” Zim said.

“Does it bother you that you’ll be part of the toast?” I asked.

“Fuck you.  What are you gonna do now? Kill me?  Go for it.  The zombies get out.  Put me in jail? Fuck you, the zombies get out. Face it, jackass. Even as a captive I have more power than you,” Zim snarled.

I had to admit, he had a point, and as much as I wanted to just shoot him or leave him out for the zombies to eat, I had to figure out a way to contain the threat. 

“Let’s walk, asshole,” I said, gesturing with the barrel of my rifle.

“If I refuse? Same rules, jackass,” Zim smirked.

His smirk lasted a second, and then it was replaced with a look of shock as Charlie brought his fist crashing into the side of Zim’s head.  Zim went down like the proverbial sack of crap.  He didn’t get to lay there; Charlie grabbed him by the shoulders and lifted him back on his feet. Zim’s eyes were glazed over for a moment before he recovered and figured out what had just happened.

“Ow! Motherfucker! You can’t…wait!” Zim’s sentence was cut off as Charlie hit him again, let him fall, then put him back on his feet.

It took a little while longer for the effect to wear off.  I had a little sympathy for him.  I’d been hit by Charlie before in training, and it always felt like getting hit with a sack full of rocks.

This time Charlie spoke.  “These are the rules, jackass. You open your stupid mouth to be insulting, and I will punch you to the ground.  If you do not learn this rule, I will beat you half to death.  If you insist on being a nasty little prick for the rest of your short life, I will finish the job I started.” Charlie grabbed Zim by his long blonde hair.  “Do you understand?”

Fortunately, Zim was a quick study of human behavior, and he must have concluded that the next few minutes of his life depended entirely on his ability to control his natural, albeit misplaced and potentially deadly, character flaws.

We marched Zim back the way we had come since it was a shorter walk to Fair Grove than it was to Springfield.   He didn’t have much to say, but I could see he clearly was not liking the fact that we were bringing him back to the place that he had exploited for so long. 

A half hour’s hike brought us to the small shed and the table where the original phone conversation had taken place. The people of Fair Grove were finished with their preparations, and when we arrived a small group came out to meet us.  Meggie was with them, as was Brian.

“Here’s Zim. He’s not so scary once you knock some sense into him,” Charlie said.

Zim glared bloody murder at Charlie, but he should have been paying better attention.  Brian came up and slammed a fist in Zim’s gut, folding him in half, and dropping him to the ground.

Brian raised a hand to strike again, but I held up a hand.  “There’s been enough of that, thanks.”

Brian snorted. “I don’t take orders from you.” He raised his fist again, and I stuck the barrel of my rifle in his face.

“Now you will.  Hit him again, and I will see how many of your teeth I can blow out the back of your head. I figure I’ll be protecting someone from murder.” I must have had a serious enough look on my face because Brian backed off. 

Meggie came to the rescue by pulling Brian off. “Thank you, Mr. Talon.  I appreciate your help. What has become of your other crew members?” She looked past my shoulder, but I doubted she would be able to see where Tommy and Duncan were.

“They went to see if the zombies were really contained and whether or not Zombie Master here was actually working alone,” I said.  If we could borrow some kind of vehicle, any kind, I’d be grateful.”

Meggie nodded and waved a hand to another man who ran off towards the town.  “What do we do with him?” Meggie asked, more out loud to her people than to me.

“String him up! Don’t waste a bullet on him!”

“Kill him!” My daughter almost starved last winter!”

“Feed him to the zombies!”

Meggie gave me a half smile and then turned it on Zim. “I guess the people have spoken, Mr. Zim. Get him up, find a rope, and a tree.”

“I think not,” Charlie said, unslinging his rifle from his shoulder.

“What? What do you mean?” Meggie turned to me. “This man has extorted us for the last two years, threatening to send zombies to us if we didn’t pay his demands. He deserves to pay for that!”

“I agree with you a hundred percent, Meggie, I really do. But while he’s a loud mouth asshole, I have to give him credit for keeping the scam going this long.  Have any of you actually been near Springfield?” I asked.  I didn’t get any responses to my question.  “Did any of you ever actually ask yourself how he managed to keep thousands of zombies in check?”

Still no answer.

“Since he never really let any zombies loose, I for one can’t really say whether or not there are actually any zombies held in captivity. Bottom line is this. You aren’t going to kill him because all he did was make you look stupid for believing his bullshit,” Charlie said.  “I hit him because he was an ass, that’s all.”

“If I were you, I’d drive him fifty miles away in any direction and dump him off with a warning he’d be shot on sight if he ever dared to show his face around these parts again,” I said.

Brian glared at me. “I ain’t you. And I won’t be forgetting you put a gun in my face.”

I looked back at Brian. “It might be better if you do.” I looked over at Meggie.  “We’ll take that ride now.  I leave this matter in your hands, “I said. “But don’t kill him.”

Meggie looked down at Zim and then at the people gathering.  “And if we do?”

“Then we will have a serious problem. Let’s not let it get there,” I said.  I turned to Charlie. “Let’s go see what we have down south. We’re done here,” I said. I turned to look at Meggie and Brian. “For now.”

We travelled south in a very beat up Monte Carlo that was nearly older than I was.  The damn thing had a hole in the floorboards that let in fumes from the exhaust pipe which also had a hole. Charlie and I spent a very uncomfortable ride down the road, with both of us sticking our heads out of the car windows like a couple of dogs enjoying rare car trip.

When we were about a mile from the city, I got a call over the radio.

“John, is that you in the blue car heading south? Over.”

It was Duncan. “That’s us, we’ll be there in a few minutes. Over.”

“Okay. What are you guys carrying?  It looks like you have a rug sticking out of the front windows. Over.”

I looked over at Charlie. “Never mind. Over.”

Charlie smiled. “You do need a haircut.”

“Shut up.”

We reached the outlying areas of Springfield and began to notice that the cars on the roads were all tipped onto their sides. As we looked closer, we saw that there was movement in between the cars.  I scanned the cars with my rifle scope, and the first look I got was a grey ghoul’s face looking right back at me.  By reflex, I very nearly pulled the trigger. 

I got on the radio.  “Duncan, we’re here, over. Where are you? Over.”

“We see you.  We’ll be right there. Over,” Duncan said.

In a minute the van came up from the west and pulled alongside the Monte Carlo.  I was very glad any more travel was going to happen in a vehicle that didn’t require a gas mask.

“So what’s the story?” Charlie asked. “We caught the Zombie Master and turned him in to the people of Fair Grove.”

“Ah, hell,” Duncan said. “There’s a problem with that.”

“I’m going to hope you aren’t like Tommy, and you will just tell the story in one shot and not drag it out,” I said.

“It will be short.  We caught up to the people who were keeping the zombies in their pens.  They told us a very different story. Turns out Zim had been contracted by the people of Fair Grove to do something about the constant threat of Zombies from the bigger town. So Zim and his crew figured out a way to keep the zombies contained in these pens of cars.   They lost two people trying it, but in the end it worked out.  Trouble was, the good people of Fair Grove didn’t want to pay what they owed.”

I interrupted. “Now it makes sense when he said they owed him and his crew.”

“Exactly, so we need to get back and keep them from killing that guy, despite his stupid nickname,” Tommy said.

“Shit, let’s move,” I said, getting into the van.

As we drove back, I began to think about the preparations we had seen, especially the sniper towers.  I hoped we weren’t going to be waging a losing battle from five hundred yards away.

As it turned out, I needn’t have worried.  A literal sea of trucks, trailers, and other vehicles were scattered all over the road and stretched back for miles.  About two hundred fighters were in a semi-circle around the small group we had left earlier, and about twenty of them were keeping their rifles pointed at the smaller group. I could see a short, dark-haired woman keeping things under control at the center of the standoff.

We pulled up, and I immediately got out, walking over to the group. I was glad things had not gotten out of control yet, but I was pissed that the town had duped me. 

I went over to Sarah and gave her a quick hug as thanks for keeping things under control. She smiled, and I nodded to two unit leaders who gave a hand signal to their troops. Immediately the rifles that were pointed at the townspeople were aimed in a more safe direction.

Brian was there, as was Meggie.  I directed my comments towards them.

“So. You made a deal, and when it went your way, you tried to keep from holding up your end of the bargain, yes?” I asked quietly.  “And then you let us think that Zim was the bad guy.”

I went over to Zim who was standing by three of my fighters.  He looked very relieved, yet mad at the same time.  I didn’t blame him, he’d been treated badly all around.

“My apologies for my comrades’ actions and for mine.  We acted in haste, and we should have taken the time to get your story,” I said.

Charlie nodded. “Sorry for roughing you up there.”

Zim was more calm now that things seemed to have gone his way. “Just glad your friends showed up.  They were going to kill me.” He pointed at Brian and Meggie.

“Looks like you and your friends down at Springfield need to relocate, “I said. There’s a lot of good places across the river if you’re interested in a change of scenery.”

“Thanks.  Let me get back to them and talk to them,” Zim said.

Zim rode off on a small motorcycle, and I turned back to Meggie and Brian. 

“Don’t send anyone from your town to represent this area.  We don’t want your kind up in the new capital.”

Maggie glared, but Brian spoke up.

“You ain’t the boss here. We didn’t elect you.  So why don’t you take your army and fuck off?” he snarled.

“Presently, presently,” I said. “We are moving on, and you are on your own.  You’ll figure out what that means in a few years, but for now, I think I’ll just leave it up to your imagination.”

I waved my hand in a circular motion, and the fighters went back to their vehicles.  There was a loud roar as hundreds of vehicles started up. 

“Son of a bitch!” Brian leapt to his feet and lunged at me, his huge fists swinging.

I dodged to the side and slammed an elbow into the side of his head, knocking him sideways and down. I raised a hand to keep my fighters back while Brian regained his feet. He spat a glob of blood out of his mouth, and I didn’t wait for him to get set.  Moving forward suddenly, I snapped a jab to his mouth and followed it with a fist to his gut.  Brian’s eyes got wide as his breath left him, and I slammed another elbow to his head. This time he went down, and it took a little longer for him to get up.

“I admire your sand, Mr. Wright, but I would hope you’d reconsider before this gets serious.  Right now we’ve had a bit of a disagreement, but I hope we don’t get into a full blown argument,” I said, stepping away as he reached out with a clumsy hand to try and grab my leg.

Brian apparently hadn’t learned when he was outclassed, and came off his feet with a lunge, he arms wide to try and pull me in close where his strength would be of an advantage for him.

Unfortunately for him, this was a move we taught all of our fighters, since many times zombies will come off the ground with their arms out in an attempt to grab whatever they can reach and pull it in for a bite. Best way to deal with it was to lean to the side and direct the attack away from you which is what I did with Brian. He went sideways and fell on his face again, and I waited for him to get up.

“I’m done with this, Mr. Wright.  And so are you.  If this keeps up I’ll have to kill you, and I’d rather not do that. Would you be so kind as to give up?” I asked.