Jango's Anthem: Zombie Fighter Jango #2 (7 page)

He
turned his face up to the sky, as if he sought an answer there, but, since no answers appeared in the uncaring sky, Jango turned his face back toward Vanessa and said, “I'm headed to Phoenix. You can probably find your pills there.” Then he quickly added, “I mean, if you want to ride with me, that is.”

He
looked away, embarrassed; sure that Vanessa would reject his offer. His fear turned out to be unfounded.

“
I would absolutely love to hitch a ride with you, Mr. Jango!” Vanessa said in delight.

He
grinned, and turned to head back toward his car. He looked back over his shoulder, and said, “Go ahead and grab your shit out of your car, there's plenty of room in the trunk of mine.”

When he
noticed that she wasn't moving, he turned back to face her. He noticed a troubled expression on her face, so he asked her, “What's the problem?”

Vanessa's face seemed clouded with worry as she looked Jango and said,
“You, you know I'm not a, well, I mean, you saw. I'm not exactly what you might call a
real
woman.” She seemed close to tears again. Her head was hung low, and her shoulders were slumped as if she felt defeated by her life.

Jango looked at her with a deeper understanding of what it was to be human than any Master
’s degree, PhD, M.D., or any other alphabet soup graduate of higher education could ever attain. He said, “Real woman? According to who? According to you? Or a bunch of mother-fuckers that can't stand to see you or anybody else be free and happy? Shit, all those shit heels that used to rant and rave at people about what their religion says is wrong are fucking zombies now! So, what? Are you gonna let a bunch of zombies tell you who you can be?” He continued speaking, building momentum as the truth poured out of his mouth. “Look, lady, I am not offering you a ride so I can bang you on a regular basis. I'm offering you a ride because you will die on your own. Or worse. And guess what? I’ll still be alive, and I will always know that I could have saved you. It's us against them, just like it always was, and just like it will always be. Because the zombies have always been here, those humans with that hole they can never fill and that insatiable appetite that is, to me, the most important defining point of the difference between us, and them.” He pointed his finger at the dead men on the ground, and repeated the word, “Them.”

He
scrubbed the top of his shaved head with his large, callused hand, and then sighed. “So, do you want the damn ride or not?” He asked her.

Vanessa had begun crying
while Jango spoke. She could feel the hard, sharp edge of his truth cut through the chains that had bound the wings of her spirit for her entire life. She cried hard and long. She poured out a lifetime of tears that she suddenly felt able to shed, because for the first time in her life, she knew with one hundred percent certainty that it was okay to be herself.

As her sniffles lessened, she turned her teary eyes to Jango and s
poke in barely more than a whisper. “Yes, I would very much like to ride with you to Phoenix.” The words she had spoken carried the weight of a truth that could only have been born between two people who had been outcast from birth.

“
All right then, let’s dispense with the touchy-feely drama-rama,” Jango said with his normal lack of tact, “And get our asses in gear. Do you have any shit you need to get out of your car?”

“
Just my suitcase,” she said. Her voice sounded stronger, and her eyes had started to shine with the hope of having a chance to survive another day. In the clan with no name, the tribe of children who had survived abuse, the hope of a chance to survive another day was far more precious than any gold or jewels.

He
went over to her car, spotted the keys in her ignition and pulled the key from the ignition slot. He looked in the backseat, no suitcase, so he went to the trunk of the car, opened it, and then removed the suitcase that he found there. Jango did not mean his actions to be brusque; it was his nature to be independent, so rather than ask Vanessa exactly where the suitcase was, he simply found it himself. That fierce independence spoke volumes about the depth of his character, and give a hint of the indomitable will that lay beneath his scarred exterior.

He left the trunk of her car open with the keys dangling from the lock
. He walked back to his own car, opened the passenger side door and reached into the glove box to press the switch that would pop the trunk. Jango lifted the lid on the trunk and tossed her suitcase into the dark interior, and then closed it. He then transferred all of his double-barreled shotguns into the backseat of the car. When he had finished, he turned to face Vanessa, and made an "after you" gesture with a sweeping motion of his stick toward the passenger side door. He held the door for her, and when she had climbed in, he closed the door, went around the car, and climbed into his own seat.

Jango pulled his door shut and put the still idling vehicle into gear. He
took a look at his gas gauge, and saw that he was down to a quarter of a tank of fuel. For two months he had frequently used gasoline liberally to rid the world of his enemies, the zombies, but had figured out that he tended not to notice when the fuel level was low. He found it both ironic and humorous that he had used thousands of gallons of gasoline, and burned down acres and acres of buildings, yet he couldn't seem to keep track of how much fuel was in his vehicle's fuel tank. Chuckling to himself, he looked around to see if he could spot the telltale sign of filling station in the area. He didn't spot one, so he climbed back out of the car and said to Vanessa, “Would you mind pressing the button in the glove box to pop the trunk for me?” Jango walked back around to the trunk of the car, and reopened it. He pulled out a five gallon gas can and an eight foot length of hose. He climbed back in the car, and put it into gear.

Jango backed the car up and then turn
ed the wheels so that he would be able to pull in alongside a large Suburban that he assumed must have belonged to the would-be rapists who were, at present, dead and rotting on the ground. As he thought about the men, he reminded himself to pop their skulls before he left. “The easiest way to kill a zombie is to kill them
before
they’re a zombie,” he said out loud with a chuckle.

Vanessa surprised Jango when she laughed at his quip. He looked at her to see if she had been making fun of him, and saw that her laugh was genuine. He shook his head, and got the big car rolling.

He carefully guided the sedan so that the caps for both the fuel tank on his car, and the suburban were facing each other. He positioned the car so that the vehicles were only about three feet apart. Jango climbed out of the car, reached down into the foot-well, and flipped the small lever that would pop the cover open on the fuel tank. He then went over to the Suburban, punched the small door that covered the fuel cap, and tore the dented cover open. He unscrewed the gas cap on the large vehicle, and then turned around and unscrewed the gas cap on his own car. Then, with a swiftness that spoke of long practice, he inserted the hose into the fuel tank of the large Suburban. When he heard the soft sound of the hose as it hit the bottom of the fuel tank, he withdrew the hose a little less than an inch. Then he took a deep breath, let it all the way out, and then sucked as hard as he could on the hose. When his lungs were full of air, he put his thumb over the end of the hose, let out his breath, and repeated his actions. The harsh fumes hit his throat first, and then the first splash of gasoline hit his lips. He spat out the fuel, put his thumb over the hole, and quickly inserted the hose into his own fuel tank making sure to keep the hose end lower than the fuel cap on the Suburban. Waiting, he listened to the muted splashing of the fuel going from the Suburban into his own car.

After several minutes
, he heard the sound of splashing begin to grow louder. He quickly uncapped the large gas can, pulled the hose from his own fuel tank, and inserted it into the five-gallon gas can.

The gas can
completely filled in a couple of minutes, and he withdrew his hose from the Suburban, put the cap back on the gas can, and recapped the fuel tank on his vehicle. He picked up the fuel can and his hose, and walked back to the trunk of his car.

Snapping
the length of hose like a bullwhip several times to clear any excess fuel from its length, he then loosely coiled it and tossed it in the trunk. He double checked the cap on the large gas can to make sure that it was tight, and then placed it in the trunk alongside Vanessa's suitcase.

Before he climbed back in his car,
he went around and snapped each of the men’s necks, making sure to jerk their heads to make sure the job was done right.

As
he climbed back into the car, he smiled over at Vanessa and said, “You know, Hollywood never does show you all the messed up shit you have to do when the zombies come to town!”

Vanessa
looked queasy as he chuckled, put the vehicle into gear, and then motored slowly to the ramp that would take them back onto the I-17 S. Back to the road that would take them to Phoenix, and whatever the zombie apocalypse might hold in store for them.

Chapter 9:

One
Night in New River

After less than
twenty minutes in the car with Vanessa, Jango had begun to seriously reconsider his decision to give her a ride to Phoenix. He had an unusual level of comfort with silence, but the opposite seemed to hold true for Vanessa. Since the moment he had put the car in gear, she had blathered endlessly about people whom, not only did he not know, but he wouldn't have given a shit about even if he had known them.

A fantasy
about pulling over and asking Vanessa to check the tire for him, and then taking off without her crossed his mind. He even started to plan how he might do it.

He would
start by asking her if she had heard a rattling noise coming from the rear tire. Then he would pull over and ask her to take a quick look. When she climbed out of the vehicle to look, he would floor the accelerator and leave her babbling ass on the side of the road to fend for herself.

He couldn’t really leave her on the side of the road, so he just sighed, and settled back into his seat and tried to zone out on the road. As Vanessa endlessly yammered about a bunch of people who Jango figured were mostly zombies by then, he thought of the incongruity between his high threshold for pain and his low tolerance for meaningless chatter.

Suddenly, an
ingenious idea occurred to him. He turned to Vanessa with an urgent look on his face. “Did you hear that?” he asked her. “Shhhh! Listen." Vanessa was instantly quiet, as she strained her ears to hear whatever noise had made Jango so anxious.

“
Help me keep an eye and an ear out for danger. You never know when they might just come out of nowhere and get you!” Jango said urgently.

Chuckling
inwardly, he surreptitiously watched Vanessa as she tried to look in every direction at once. “That should keep her quiet until we get to New River,” he thought to himself.

Jango
spotted the sign for New River, and turned on the ramp that would take them to the town. He took the long, curved off-ramp slowly, and he stayed alert for any signs of danger.

The freeway off-ramp turned into New River Road, and then abruptly ended at theI-17 frontage road
, which led back to the northbound lanes of the deserted freeway. He mentally flipped a coin, and chose to turn right on the frontage road.

“Did you just use your turn signal?” Vanessa asked him.

“What?” he asked in confusion.

“You did, you used your turn signal, and
God help me, but that is
funny.
” Vanessa started laughing like a loon.

Jango just gritted his teeth, and started to drive a little bit faster. A large pair of buildings came into view, and
his jaw unclenched.

“Whooo-hoooo!”
he whooped at Vanessa as he unconsciously clicked the lever for his turn signal, and made a left turn into a large parking lot.

She
burst out laughing again. She started to laugh so hard that she could barely breathe. “You,” she gasped for breath as she tried to speak through her laughter, “You, hee-hee-hee, you used the turn signal again, hee-hee-ha-ha!” She clutched her stomach as she dissolved into fits of laughter.

Jango hit the brakes suddenly, and Vanessa squawked as she
was thrown against her seat belt with jarring force.

“Oops!”
he said with a grin.

She
straightened herself up in the seat, and read the sign on the large building in front of them. “New River Super Storage? What are we doing here?” She asked.

Jango slowly guided the car around to the side of the large, corrugated aluminum building, and pointed to the fenced lot that lay behind it. There was a large lot that was half-full of recreational vehicles, travel trailers, and boats.

“Almost any time you see a storage facility in these smaller towns, there is going to be an RV storage lot behind it. We are going to live in style tonight.”

Jango started doing the wave
. His left hand flapped wildly out his window, and his right hand flapped in front of Vanessa’s face in an invitation to join him. She found it difficult not to get caught up in his cheerfulness, and pretty soon she had started doing the wave along with him. Jango whooped at the top of his lungs, let go of her hand, and aimed the car at the gate of the RV storage lot.

He kept the car moving slowly, and let the sheer weight of the car break the chain-link gates open. He slowly motored around the lot until he spotted the biggest
fifth-wheel travel trailer he had ever seen.

Jango had stars in his eyes as he came to a stop, and read the gigantic words that
were painted on the side of the enormous trailer. “Big Country,” he murmured in awe. He put the car in park and turned off the ignition. He sat staring at the massive travel trailer in silence.

Vanessa broke the spell when she opened her door and said, “Are we going to check it out, or what?”

Shaking his head, he climbed out of the car. He leaned in and grabbed his stick from the floorboard by Vanessa’s feet, and then straightened back up. As an afterthought, Jango put the key in the ignition, and turned it so that he could roll up all the windows. After he had rolled up the windows, he pocketed the keys, and took his pump shotgun from the back seat, clicked the button to lock all the doors, and closed his door.

Vanessa opened the glove box, and pushed the trunk release button before closing her door. She walked to the trunk and got her suitcase out. She set her suitcase on the ground, extended a telescoping handle from the top, and closed the trunk.

She turned back to look at Jango and said, “Well, let’s get checked into this hotel!”

After a long, hard look at the surrounding area, Jango
put his stick under his left arm, walked up to the Big Country RV and tried the door. He was surprised to find it unlocked at first, but when he thought about it, it actually made sense. The place was out on the edge of town, and surrounded by chain link fence that was topped with barbed wire. The trailer was as safe as it could be.

Jango motioned for Vanessa to stay where she was, and then stealthily made his way into the trailer. A quick look through the place convinced
him that it was safe and zombie free, so he helped Vanessa get her large suitcase up the metal stairs, and into the trailer.

After one more look at the area around the trailer,
he closed and locked the door, and started to poke around until he found the circuit board for the trailer’s generator. He finally found it inside of a cupboard, and he flipped the master switch.

The results were nothing short of miraculous as the lights came on, and the high-dollar electrical generator
began softly humming. He crossed his fingers as he watched the water level indicator light up. When it indicated that the water tanks were full, he pumped his hands in the air and smiled at Vanessa.

“What’s got you so happy?” She asked.

“The water tanks are full, the water tanks are full, hi-ho-the-derry-o, the water tanks are full!” Jango sang in reply. When he saw that she still didn’t comprehend why he was so excited, he explained, “We get to take showers tonight, hot showers, with WATER! These rich folks, the ones who own these behemoths, they almost always keep them ready to go. Well, at least they used to. There is water, and a generator for electricity.”

Realization dawned on Vanessa’s face, and her eyes lit up with joy. “Oh. My.
God. You better not be shittin’ me, Jango.” Her southern accent became more pronounced in her excitement. “I swear, if you’re shittin’ me, I might cry!”

Jango solemnly walked to the kitchen area of the huge trailer, and turned the knob on the
kitchen faucet. The faucet sputtered a few times, and then water started to flow out of it.

Vanessa whooped, opened her suitcase, and started digging through her belongings.

“We will have to wait for a little bit while the water heats up, but it shouldn’t be very long,” he said as Vanessa produced a variety of feminine hygiene items and fresh clothing from her voluminous luggage. 

“I can wait, Jango, shoot, I can wait! Do you know when the last time I had a hot
bath was?” She kept rooting through her bag as she talked. “That’s right, two damn months! Now, don’t get me wrong, I was happy to have a whore’s-bath from a washtub when there was no other option, but baby, I have
dreamed
about a nice, hot bath!”

Jango made a mental note to remember the term “whore’s-bath
.” “Um, I don’t know if you will get a bath,” he said. “These things usually just have a little shower. But we can go check,” he added.

He
led the way toward the front of the trailer, and to the door of the restroom. They both looked into the surprisingly large bathroom, and immediately saw that it included a full-sized Jacuzzi!

They both stared at the large
hot tub in silence for several moments as they each thought about how much the world had changed in such a short time.

“I never would have thought that a hot
tub would be such a big deal,” Jango said softly. “I mean, back before the Z-Virus hit, that is.” Then he added, “That lousy, stinking Z-Virus, I wonder where that shit came from.”

“You don’t know?” Vanessa asked incredulously.

Jango was taken aback. “You know where it came from?” He asked her. “Do you really know?”

“I thought everybody knew. It was on the news, on the internet, and even in the newspapers
,” Vanessa said in a gentle tone. “It was Mosnato, that huge corporation that owned most of the seeds in the world.”

Jango nodded slowly
. He had a feeling that he knew what she was about to say. He knew about Mosnato and their mad rush to genetically modify all of the staple foods in the world.

Vanessa continued, “So Mo
snato decided at some point that it would be a good idea to insert animal DNA into our produce, our fruits, and vegetables. They started getting larger fruits and better yields for crops, but it just wasn’t enough for them.” She paused for a moment. “Nope, it just wasn’t enough for those greedy bastards. They had to take it even further. They started to insert human DNA into some root-vegetables like yams, potatoes, and carrots. How the hell did we not know?” She yelled.

Vanessa took a deep breath, and then went on in a lower voice. “The vegetables even started to look like body parts, but we didn’t notice. The damn yams had things that looked like veins, for
God’s sake! Well, pretty soon their genetic modifications gave birth to a virus that wasn’t even detectable at the time, and it was spread to people by the root vegetables. The first strain of the, what did you call it? Oh yeah, the Z-Virus. Anyway, the first strain of it had a two-week incubation period, so that shit was spread all over the globe by the time the first zombie popped up. Then it somehow went airborne, and the incubation time got shorter and shorter.” She looked at Jango, and asked, “How do you not know all of this?”

Jango took a deep breath, and decided that it
didn’t matter anymore, and that he could tell her a little bit of his story. “Come on, let’s sit down, and I’ll tell you a tale,” he said in a somber tone. Vanessa let him lead her to the king-size bed that took up the front of the trailer, and they sat down on the edge of the mattress.

Jango set his shotgun on the bed beside him, and held his stick with both hands as he began to tell her how he had come to be in Prescott when the Zombie Apocalypse had first started.

“I lived in Phoenix for most of my life, and it just seemed to suit me. Nasty air, people pissed off because it’s over a hundred degrees in the shade, and the anonymity that comes with living in a city composed of people on the move. Functional transients; that pretty much says it all.” Jango toyed with his stick as he wondered how much he should tell her.

“So I lived in the city, and I started to lose my ability to see any good in the people around me. I was, I mean, I had a tough time as a kid, and I never really trusted anyone, but this was different.” Jango took a deep breath, and then
blurted out, “I started hunting people! I mean, not people. I hunted
humans.
” He said the word “humans” like it was a curse-word.

“I paid attention, and followed my instincts. I tracked and traced any low-life I could find, and started to
find the criminals that were in charge of different operations. I hunted rich thugs who ran sex-trafficking operations, rapists, pimps, and the middle management scum-sacks who operated dog-fighting facilities. Shit, I started finding those mother-fuckers, and I started hunting them through the city. I once fed a dog-fight operator to the dogs he had abused for so long. And do you want to know something? It felt so good. It was justice, girl. The fucking law never gave a shit about a victim, but justice is all heart. Anyway, I was on the run in Prescott when the wheels came off, and the Z-Virus threw us all into a Bruce Campbell movie. I had finally gone too far. I beat a man to death for punching his dog in the head. Shit, there were so many witnesses, so I just ran. I headed north, holed up in a shitty hotel with no TV, and then, the next thing I knew there were zombies trying to eat me.” Jango finished his story, fully expecting Vanessa to be freaked out by the fact that he had just admitted to killing people even before the Z-Virus had turned the world upside down.