What Zombies Fear (Book 2): The Maxists (10 page)

When we pulled into the sporting goods store, the parking lot had a few cars and a couple of trucks. The windows were intact and it was dark inside, which were good signs. Marshall reversed our truck until the rear bumper was touching the building; Charlie did the same on the opposite side of the door. John and Reineer pulled their trucks up, like the roof on a house, effectively sealing the door.

Charlie pulled out his halligan and strode to the door, while the rest of us hunkered down on the far sides of our vehicles, creating a pen for any zombies inside. Charlie shook the doors and banged on the glass with the handle of his halligan and we waited. First one hand appeared out of the gloom inside and pushed on the door, then more and more. Charlie stuck his face against the glass, laughing, banging on the door, teasing the zombies inside.

“
That’s good, get out of there, Charlie.” Said Marshall as Charlie headed back to the truck, vaulting over the hood.

John fired two rounds, blowing the deadbolt locks out of the doors. The press of zed’s pushed the doors all the way open. We opened fire. Almost every corpse that fell out of the building was wearing hunting clothes. I wondered how long they’d managed to survive before one got to them.

I couldn’t help but think about these people, holed up in a sporting goods store, doing their best to survive. One of them gets bitten out on a raid and hides the bite and turns an hour later after getting through whatever security they’d set up. I wondered what their story was. I wondered if any of them had kept a diary or journal as we cut them down leaving their prison. All in all we ended thirty-one shambling, half eaten, rotten corpses. When we worked out this process, we’d placed a lot of emphasis on not breaking the windows. We had managed to control our fire such that we didn’t break a single window although the checkout counter right inside the doorway was pretty well decimated.

Our breach procedure worked perfectly. John and Reineer pulled their trucks out of the way, opening up the doorway, as the rest of us pulled the rotten, putrid smelling corpses out of the doorway and off to the middle of the lot. Our goal was to leave this place secured, so that we could easily come back if we had to and have a reasonable assurance that it would remain clear.

Inside the store we all took out our flashlights and started an isle by isle clearing. The back doors were barricaded securely from the inside. The smell of rotten flesh was pretty strong, but not as bad as I expected. I came around the corner past the isle of kayaks, face to chest with a massive corpse that was reaching for me over the gun counter. My gun raised to its head level before I realized the gigantic thing was trapped back there. I exhaled as I took my finger off the trigger and found my way to the folding section of counter.

“
Got one, he’s a big fucker. I’m dragging him outside before I kill it, clear the isles, get down and don’t distract him.” I said into my radio.

I paced back and forth in front of the counter. Everywhere I went, he followed. As long as I stayed a foot or so back from the counter, which came just above his waist, he couldn’t get to me. I went all the way to one wall, then ran for the middle, flipped the counter top up and said “Come and get me!” as I backed away. I had about a ten foot lead when he made it to the opening of the counter, but his arm hit the countertop as he rounded the corner, flipping it back down.

I reset once again, this time on the other side. Once again I ran to the middle, flipped up the counter and backed off about ten feet. The giant ghoul was missing half of its thigh; it dragged its bad leg like a prop behind it. Drag and step. Drag and step. It was easy enough to stay ahead of it. I walked backwards out the door, pulling my hatchet out of the loop on my pack as I walked. I waited for it to catch me at the pile of corpses and when it reached for me as they all do, I side-stepped and smashed it skull in with the hatchet. The newly de-animated corpse landed face-down on top of the pile.

After a quick mental kudos on how well that went, a decision-shadow appeared in front of me, reaching for my throat. I barely had time to react, swinging my hatchet for the hand that would be at my throat when the swirling black smoke appeared in front of me. My hatchet removed the things hand before the monster teleported away again. I heard a scream from way off in the distance behind me and looked around for it, trying to find either the creature or a sign of where it was going to appear. I spun slowly in a circle, sig in my left hand, hatchet in my right. I backed in a crouch, turning slowly until I was back inside the store.

“
There’s a smart one outside, now wounded. He teleported off, but I don’t think he’s gone. He’s going to want a little payback for the hand I removed.”

John came out to the front door.

“
You cured his clap? Nice work mate! Now you play bait and I’ll reel in the zombie cod. Just don’t get your tackle mangled.”

“
Tackle? What?”

“
It’ll be easy. Go draw him out!” replied John, who had to be tired of explaining his slang to me.

I stepped slowly outside, repeating the same movements I had last time, hoping to make him think I was leading another zombie out. A shadow appeared to my left. The black swirl cleared as John fired, the zombie’s head exploded before the smoke had a chance to clear.

“
Nice shot there John.”

“
Bloody oath.” he replied. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up, a second before a hand grabbed me and a bullet whizzed by my ear. As the black smoke swirled around me, I noticed the zombie on the ground had both hands.

I felt intense cold, then the smoke cleared around me and I was in the middle of a field well off from the store.

“
That the best you can do?” I asked.

“
I’m going to enjoy this,” he said as we circled.

“
What did I do to you? I was just looking for some clothes when you attacked me!” I said.

“
You killed my soldiers. I don’t appreciate that.”

“
They would have killed me and besides, you can make more easily enough.”

“
Starting with you!” He said, lunging for me.

I knew this was coming; I didn’t even need my ability to see it. This guy was what we’d call a ‘smart zombie’, but I didn’t get the feeling he was all that smart.

I dodged to the side, swung the sig around and blew a hole in his remaining hand. I used the gun partially to give John and idea where I was and partially because it happened to be in my left hand.

“
What’s your name guy?” I asked.

He held up his hand and we watched the hole close up. “Harry Gould. I was going to turn you, but now I think I’m just going to eat you.”

Faster this time, he came for my throat, his mouth open, coming for my nose. I hit him in the head with the back of the hatchet, stunning him and giving me a second to get free.

“
Are you the head of the zombies around here?”

“
Darryl and I are heading down to Culpeper to take care of some group of humans who have been giving our boss some trouble. It looks like we’ll get to report that we took out two groups of humans. Well, I will, since you killed Darryl.”

We were still circling each other. This guy was either really dumb or way smarter than I was giving him credit for. Why was he talking? Why was he waiting for my backup to arrive?

“
Harry, what’s your boss’s name?”

Shadows danced in front of me. The best move for him was a leg sweep. That ended with me on my back and him on top of me. As that option started to solidify, I focused on the shadow that grabbed for my left wrist, willing him to choose that one. The leg sweep shadow evaporated and the wrist grab shadow became his choice.

He grabbed for my wrist just as I brought the blunt side of the hatched down on his forearm, shattering his fore arm bones and leaving his arm bent at a crazy angle. He howled in pain as he backed off, sticking his arm between his thighs and using his legs to pull it straight again. He held it up over his head as the bones knitted back together. The stump of what had been his other hand had grown into a knob and fingers were starting to sprout from it. A few more minutes and I could chop it off again.

“
Her name is Laura Watson. She was the first one on that boat outside of Baltimore. She’s pretty pissed off about how much trouble we’ve had in this area.” Harry said.

I reached down and holstered the sig. While I was doing that, I flipped the radio to voice activated instead of push to talk.

“
Harry. I’m going to let you live. By now my friends are in range and they never miss. You can be dead where you’re standing, or you can go. Which would you prefer?”

Again shadows danced in front of me. I focused on the one lunging for my throat with his almost healed hand. It solidified, even though it was the worst choice for him and I cut off his hand for a second time with one solid swing.

“
We’re too far away for your friends to be here yet.” Harry said, shoving his fresh stump into his armpit. I immediately noticed a red dot appear on his chest. “Do you have any idea how much that hurts?”

“
Look down. That would hurt even more” I said coolly.

When he saw the red dot, his attitude changed drastically.

“
Why would you let me live?” he asked.

“
I’ll let you live, if you meet two conditions. Number 1, tell me where Laura is. Number 2; give her a message for me.”

“
Mister, you’re crazy. She’ll kill you. She doesn’t even have to touch you; she can kill you with her mind.”

“
Then I’m sure she won’t mind if you tell me where she is.”

“
She’s in Australia right now. That’s the last continent we’re taking over, the people there gave us a little trouble, but we mostly have that wrapped up. Damned Australians gave us more trouble than all of Asia.”

“
Ok. Here’s the message. Tell Laura, My name is Victor Tookes. I claim all land from the former state of Virginia south along the coast, all the way to everything that is currently Florida. She can have the rest of the world, but the lower east coast is mine. If she agrees, she is to pull every zombie and super out of my territory immediately and my people won’t travel outside those lines. If she doesn’t agree, I will hunt her down and end her miserable existence. There’s nothing in those states she can’t get somewhere else. This is non negotiable.”

“
You’re Tookes?” asked Harry, clearly frightened. That reaction gave me no small amount of pleasure.

“
I am. If your people continue to harass me and my family, I will end every one of you. You sent 15,000 zombies to my house. You sent super after super to my house. I have killed everything that you’ve thrown in my path and I won’t rest until this world is safe for my family. Are we clear Harry? I will end your kind, once and for all time.”

“
I got it. I’ll tell her. But you’re just going to make her mad,” he said and then the swirling black smoke appeared covering his escape.

“
Bring it!” I said over subspace, loud enough for everything within twenty miles to hear.

“
Tookes, you’re mad as a meat axe,” said John, walking up.

“
I know mate.”

Leo came walking out of the bushes holding a laser pointer. ”I was playing with this in the store when he took you. I guess I still had it in my hand when I got here. It seemed like Harry was a few Holdens short of a carpark.”

We all chuckled about Leo running off a super zombie with a laser pointer as we finished gathering our supplies from the sporting goods store. I loaded up 24 50 round boxes of 30.06 ammunition, as well as the score of the night, ten magazines for the assault rifles we found at the police station and an astounding amount of .223 ammunition for them, almost 2000 rounds. We’d taken all the magazines we had, leaving those at home without assault rifles, so these ten more brought us to four thirty round magazines each. I outfitted Sammie with new night vision glass. It wasn’t as powerful of a scope, but being able to see in the dark made it worth the tradeoff. I hoped I didn’t need to shoot from a mile away anyways.

Everyone had new 9mm handguns. John now wore four Glock 9mm guns, two on his vest and two in leather shoulder holsters. He had his revolver on his hip old west style and he’d attached mollee style tabs to the back of his vest, where he had ten 17 round magazines secured. He was a monster in a firefight, with 91 rounds in his assault rifle and 174 in his pistols and his ability, he could kill every zombie we expected at the DOD by himself.