Dead Legends (Book 1): R.I.P. Van Winkle (19 page)

CHAPTER 31

Hundreds, if not thousands of undead lined the road. One after another, the zombified guardrail kept the men from wandering too far off the highway. More and more of the undead procession appeared from the woods along either side of the highway as Rip, Hacker, Seabass, and Colonel Patterson walked along; they watched the ghastly eyes and the dead stares follow them. There was no noise, no indication from the undead that they were going to move, and no plausible explanation to the macabre escort.

Hacker licked his lips, dry from breathing heavily through his mouth. Although he knew what was there, he couldn’t help but look to the side of the road. One foot in front of the other, gradually, they watched. Hacker bit his lip and tried his damnedest not to watch, but it was no use. By now, the undead outnumbered them by several thousand to one.

Seabass and Colonel Patterson were much less nervous, keeping their stare straight ahead and counting the paces as they stalked down the road. Colonel Patterson couldn’t help but feel like Wyatt Earp, Virgil, Morgan, and Doc Holliday walking the streets of Tombstone, headed to their inevitable showdown at the OK Corral.

Distancing themselves from the undead procession seemed like a solid idea, but the farther they walked, the more obvious it became that such an action was going to be impossible. The zombies weren’t making any kind of move towards them, nor did it look like they were going to anytime soon.

Hacker cleared his throat, the first bit of sound that any of the four men had made in quite some time. “So are we going to talk about this, or just act like these dead fuckers aren’t here?”

“Just keep your cool, Hacker. I’m sure we will get plenty of chances to kill. These assholes aren’t doing this because they want to. The Horseman is controlling them. He’s wanting to make it clear that
he
is in control. Don’t worry, there is going to be plenty of killing, and soon.”

Rip caught a glance from Hacker as he looked in his peripheral vision. It was obvious that the kid was scared shitless, but a bigger part of him wanted what Hacker wanted. He wanted to open fire, kill as many of them as he could, and go down in a blaze of glory.

The more Rip thought about what Colonel Patterson had said, the more it made sense. He was sure that his boys weren’t going to make it to Sleepy Hollow in one piece; for some reason, he felt his path to the strange encampment at Sleepy Hollow was going to be a solo trip. There was no way that the Horseman was going to let him bring backup; not that it mattered, they were still obscenely outnumbered.

They trudged on for another hour, all the while watched by the several thousand zombies that lined the road. At any moment, the undead could snap to and start charging them, but they never did. After another hour, they began to hear something that wasn’t the undead. It was something far more sinister and difficult to kill.

It was the living.

At first, the noise was barely intelligible, sounding more like a random group of sounds. Rip’s first reaction was to spread the group out and flank whatever might be ahead of them. That being impossible, he tightened the grip on his M4.

Colonel Patterson, Seabass, and Hacker took notice, each one shouldering their respective rifle.

Rip motioned for them to spread out. He was reluctant to start going towards the line of undead, but didn’t have a choice. He hated being bottled in, not for the fact of having to face the enemy—he was tired of waiting for them—but he didn’t like the feel of being out of control again. Throughout his ordeal, most everything had been decided for him, and he was getting tired of that shit. He was tired of being corralled into these kinds of situations. It had been some time since he had felt in control, and he hadn’t killed anyone all day.

Time to change that.

Rip motioned for his men to fan out. Although they couldn’t get to the side of the road, they could still cover the area in the road itself.

Hacker moved to the left, being mindful of the seemingly never-ending line of undead. The two-lane road didn’t give much room for error. The best that he could do was not be bunched up against Rip, Seabass, and Colonel Patterson. He strode over to where the blacktop ended, not more than ten feet from the undead. As he got closer to the wall of zombies, he could see the pale whites of their eyes, smelled their unimaginable stench wafting in front of his nose, and saw the myriad of wet, black substances dripping from mouths. The entire scene was an assault on the senses.

Seabass angled himself off to the right, also being aware of the undead. A sneer of disgust came across his face involuntarily. He didn’t like the smell any more than the rest of the men did.

Colonel Patterson stood his ground beside Rip, a fact not lost on the beleaguered sergeant. “You don’t have to do this, colonel. You know damn good and well they aren’t going to let you live. Hell, they aren’t going to let any of us live. Once they’re done with me, they are going to kill me, too.”

Patterson grinned slightly. A hundred yards or so up the road, he could make out two vehicles parked across the road, blocking it. He may have been past his prime, but his eyesight did not fail him. He’d had 20/20 vision as far back as he could remember, and still did to this day.

Several men stood milling around the cars, none of them making out the colonel or his friends. They joked and meandered about, oblivious.

“Shit,” Rip mumbled under his breath. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no angle to flank from, no hope of just slipping past. Once again, they were cattle led to the slaughterhouse.

“When in doubt, shoot it out. Right, sarge?” Hacker asked.

Rip darted his eyes to Hacker. “Not this time, Hacker. We are completely outnumbered and outgunned.” Rip looked ahead again. The men went from aimlessly wandering and started to form in the middle of the road. Rip breathed a deep sigh. “That being said, I’m open to suggestions.”

Seabass kept his rifle at low ready and stalked forward. Something moved off to his right, about fifty yards up the road. At first, he thought it was more undead moving into line on the side of the road.

Until he saw the outline of an MP5SD being raised.

“I think we’ll be fine, boys.”

Rip cocked his head. “What?”

Several shots rang out. The sound muffled, like someone coughing loudly. Without hesitation, Rip brought up his rifle and started to fire. Moments later, his three cohorts did the same, sending rounds toward the roadblock and turning ammunition into smoke and noise. Bodies on the other end of the barrage twitched and fell quickly, assaulted by the massive amount of firepower being flung at them.

Rip could remember firefights in Afghanistan and Iraq. Every one of them felt like they lasted an eternity.
You’ve never lived until you’ve taken fire,
he remembered. In actuality, the longest sustained firefight he took part in lasted maybe ten minutes. Those ten minutes were the longest time of his life.

This fight was over before it started.

Cordite hung in the air as Rip lowered his M4. Without thinking, he dropped his mag and replaced it with another. Unfortunately, as he searched his vest, he procured only one magazine. Thirty rounds between him and a certain death. Perfect.

He had bigger fish to fry right now, though. Like where the first shots had come from. It had been a small caliber suppressed weapon. Something like a 9mm.

Casey.

As he strolled towards the roadblock and the bodies that populated it, he saw the singular figure standing in the woods.

“I’d say that the effective range on this thing is a little more than a hundred yards, don’t you, sergeant?”

As Rip approached the line of zombies, several of them snarled and snapped at him, eager to take a bite out. He stopped short of the line and stood with his arms crossed. A few moments later, Casey shoved her way between two of the motionless corpses.

Rip stared in awe, his mouth agape. As Casey shoved her way through the line, the undead parted, barely noticing her. She stepped out onto the asphalt in front of Rip and smiled.

“I decided that you might be worth saving after all, Geoffrey Irving.”

Rip stood bewildered. “How in the hell did you do that?”

Casey looked back and pointed. “Well, you said that the effective range on the MP5SD was a hundred yards, so I figured that I could take them out with…”

Rip shook his head vehemently. “Not the MP5, Casey! How the hell did you get through the line?”

Casey turned and raised the MP5. Before Rip could stop her, she fired a single round into the zombie directly in front of her. Black goo flew out of the back of the creature’s head, and it slumped to the ground.

“They aren’t as bright as you give them credit for. The Horseman may control them, but do you think he gives a shit about losing a few? He’s got thousands, if not millions more waiting on us.”

Rip didn’t know how to react. He knew that he owed her an apology, but he couldn’t bring himself to outright say
I’m sorry.
It just wasn’t in him to do that. He did the best thing that he knew; he reached out and hugged her with one arm, just not for too long. A little emotionless, but better than nothing.

Casey got the point, and she realized that the halfhearted hug was about as good as it was going to get. She hadn’t known Rip a long time, but she had a feeling that a one-armed hug was all he had to offer.

“Good to see you, too,” she said.

You should tell your friends goodbye now.

Before he could adequately react, the splatter of blood from Casey’s head hit him in the face. The world went into slow motion as he caught her body. A quick glance down revealed a sizeable hole in the side of her head. He never heard the shot, but witnessed the result of a high-powered rifle round going through her right temple.

The world stayed in a perpetual state of decreased speed as more shots rang out around him. His hands felt prickly and asleep, like there was nothing he could do to move them. After four more shots, the world seemed to regain its normalcy.

But it was too late for Casey, Hacker, Seabass, and Colonel Patterson.

The five people he had left in the world lay dead in the middle of the road. Grief was nowhere to be found, though. Rip dropped Casey’s lifeless body and didn’t bother looking back to the rest of his now deceased crew.

His wife was dead.

His crew was dead.

His son might be dead.

Rip grabbed his M4. His emotions were on autopilot. He had felt this way a few times before, but hadn’t been able to diagnose what had happened. During a combat tour in Afghanistan, he had been told about a mission that he and several other soldiers had completed. Only during the AAR (After Action Report) did he remember what they had done. A large portion of the report was redacted after the fact. Rip was given a Bronze Star and a trip home a few weeks after the mission, still not sure of what he had done. The official report would tell about how he had lost three soldiers to an ambush by Taliban forces in the Korengal Valley, and how Master Sergeant Geoffrey Irving saved the rest of his platoon. What the report didn’t say was how he had killed six Taliban soldiers by beating them to death with his bare hands, one of those soldiers being only eleven years old. No one in the platoon wanted to oust their favorite leader, so they stuck with the “official” story. Soldiers had spoken of Rip’s blackouts before, but none of them had witnessed with their own eyes what the man was capable of once the blackout began.

Flashes of gunfire, spats of cursing, and a general fog of war clouded him. His brain was overloaded, and he was unable to fix it. Like a fuse box during a power surge, something had to give. A fuse was going to blow, and it was difficult to tell exactly what the result would be, his only hope was that the house didn’t burn down around it.

Rip lost grip on reality.

CHAPTER 32

Four bodies.

Two were missing facial features.

A third was missing his head entirely.

The fourth was in his grasp now.

Former Major Isaac Crane cowered.

Rip had his hands on the man who had ruined his life, killed his wife, and taken his son. He had no recollection of the last few minutes, nor did he care. Obviously he’d done quite a number on Crane and his men. Another blackout, another reason why he was so suited to the world he lived in now. There were no consequences, no repercussions, only what needed to be done, and this was something that was a long time coming.

Rip drove his fist into Crane’s face, knocking loose a couple more teeth and spraying blood onto the ground, mixing with the blood and sinew of the other three miscreants he had so mercilessly destroyed.

Rip pulled Crane closer. He was straddling his former commanding officer, one hand grabbing the shirt collar and the other driving home more haymakers. Every sentence was punctuated with another blow to the face.

“You son of a bitch! This is what you have created! This is what taking a man away from his family will do! You ruined my life! All those years of sending me to every shithole, sandbox, and mud-infested corner of the Earth has made me what I am today! Goddamn you for forcing me into this… this… MONSTER! You’re going to fucking die at the hands of what YOU HAVE FUCKING CREATED!”

Years of angst and pent up frustration were released as Rip continued his verbal and physical assault. After a few minutes of beating, Crane was still alive. Rip was surprised to see that he hadn’t beat his ass to death yet. Crane’s face was unrecognizable. Large bruises the sizes of baseballs were all over his former CO’s face. Blood ran in rivulets down Crane’s face from over a dozen different cuts and scrapes. Rip was certain that he had bounced Crane’s head off the pavement a few times, as evidenced by the bits of gravel stuck in a few places. Crane’s face looked as if he had just gone twelve rounds with Mike Tyson in the early years.

Rip fell back at some point, coming out of his rage-induced blackout. He lay there for a moment, panting and trying to catch his breath. He had never really been too far out of shape, even considering the years of drinking and bad food that went along with it, but he had never felt more tired and beat up than he did right now. As Rip lay on his back, he examined his knuckles. The left one was a little cut up; there were bits of flayed skin and crusted blood where the cuts had begun to heal, but none worse for wear. His right hand, however, had released unholy judgment on Crane and it felt broken. Several shades of dried blood—red, crimson, and black—were all over the hand. One of his knuckles was exposed, the bright, white, bone peeking through.

Crane tried to cough. A gurgling, choked sound came out instead. Rip rolled over and dragged himself over to Crane, grabbing him by the collar once again.

“K-kill me if you w-want, but I don’t have your s-son,” Crane sputtered out.

Rip brought Crane’s face to his own. “I know that, Isaac. I’m getting ready to take care of that shortly as well, don’t you worry.”

“The H-Horseman will kill h-him as soon as he sees you,” Crane said.

Rip frowned. “No he won’t. He needs me dead, and there is no way that he will risk that just to kill Jeff. He kills Jeff and he knows that I will go through hell to make sure that it’s the last thing he ever does.”

Crane coughed forcefully, more blood and spittle flying out of his mouth. He bared a toothless, bloody grin. “You don’t get it, asshole.
You
aren’t the one who has to kill the Horseman. Hell, you
can’t
kill him.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? I’m the one who is cursed to kill the bastard!”

Crane chortled a sickly, wheezing laugh. “And where did you hear that, cowboy? From Crayon? Who do you think has set you up this whole time? You’ve been doing his bidding since you first arrived here, haven’t you?”

Rip swallowed hard and shoved Crane back onto the ground. “How the fuck do you know that?”

“You’ve been played, Geoffrey Irving. Crayon talks to all of us; we do his bidding to keep the Horseman happy. Crayon lied to you just like he lied to me. He told me that if I delivered the boy and you to the Horseman that I would be spared. He told me that Jeff was the only one who could kill the Horseman. Crayon doesn’t give a flying fuck about you or your son; he just wants to see you both suffer.”

Rip didn’t know what to say. Could it all be true? Was Crayon just playing both ends to the middle? No, there was no way that could happen. Crayon had been his lifelong friend, someone who he always confided in, someone who could never turn their back on him.

“That’s not true! It can’t be!” Rip growled.

“Crayon came to me and told me about all the horrible shit you two had seen in Afghanistan. He was supposed to come home after that last tour, but, well, you see how that turned out. Just like everyone else in your life, you let him down. You not only let him down, you got him fucking cursed and killed! Why should he give a flying fuck about what happens to you and your family?”

Rip’s eyes welled up with tears. He couldn’t help it. “But you killed my wife, you bastard!”

“I didn’t kill Katrina; the Horseman did! I was supposed to keep the boy alive long enough for you to come out of your little fucking nap. He put you to sleep to make the whole thing real to you. You slept for ten years all because it fit in well with the ruse. You wake up ten years later, he tells you a bunch of shit about having to save the fucking world; he feeds you more and more bullshit until you finally do what he asks.”

Rip choked back a sob. “Why? How did the zombies get here?”

“Don’t you remember that super-flu that was going around? How do you think it spread so fast? The goddamn Chinese had the whole fucking country infected before any of us knew how bad it was going to get. Crayon may be cursed, but he’s not fucking stupid.”

“So I can’t save the world? There is no end to the plague?” Rip asked.

Crane went into a violent coughing fit, spewing more blood and rolling onto his side. The swelling in his brain would reach critical levels shortly.

“Fuck no! Unless you have some kind of PhD in virology, the whole planet is fucked! Crayon fed you so much shit, you can’t tell what’s true and what’s complete bullshit anymore! He just wanted to see you suffer. He’s going to kill your son in front of you and then he’s going to fuck your corpse, Geoffrey Irving,” Crane said, laughing. “And I fucking helped him do it!”

Rip could no longer stand what he was hearing. He leapt onto Crane once more, intending to finish beating him to death, but it was too late. Major Isaac Crane died laughing like a lunatic at the convoluted plan that he had helped create.

Rip dropped his lifeless corpse and tried to figure out exactly what he was dealing with. Crayon had lied, that was evident now. All Rip had done was to get rid of Crane, who had apparently made a deal with the Horseman to keep Jeff alive all these years. Rip had been put to sleep just to make the whole story about him saving the world believable. He couldn’t save the world any more than those goddamn hippies who bitched about global warming could.

If I can’t save the world, then I can’t kill the Horseman, either.

What the fuck can I do?

There was only one thing left to do. He had one link left to the life he had before, only one thing left to live for, and now that was in question, too. He had to save Jeff, maybe not for himself, but he had to do it for someone.

He had to save his son.