The Age of Zombies: Sergeant Jones (11 page)

Jones slouched on the brick hearth. His body was limp. His limbs felt stupid. He couldn’t do a damn thing about the giant now.

He watched as the monster went up the stairs. The giant’s footsteps were like thunder coming through the ceiling. The monster made its way into every bedroom, down the hall, and rechecked each room again.

The paralysis was wearing off. Jones could touch his thumb to his forefinger. But that was it. He couldn’t stand. He couldn’t rush upstairs and save his family.

It sounded like a horrible thunderstorm upstairs with the giant crashing about. But then it stopped. There was over a minute of pure silence. It was deafening. Jones shut his eyes and concentrated as hard as he could at putting life back into his limbs. But they were dead.

Then the giant let out a guttural roar. Jones heard the monster thud back into the hallway. And then it was all over with. The giant found the attic.

The air was cut by Vanessa’s screams. Emma Jo called out for Jones.

“Papa, papa!”

The giant slung them both over his shoulders, and stomped back downstairs.

Jones strained for every ounce of strength. He had to get to his pistol. He could take out this monster, this fiend, he only had to get to his gun.

But it was hopeless.

The giant made it to the bottom of the stairs, and unceremoniously went straight for the exit. Jones lifted his arm and reached out for his family. Emma Jo did the same, with tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Papa! Papa!” she cried. Emma Jo’s face was contorted with fear. “Papa! Save me!”

Vanessa was knocked out cold.

Those were the last moments with his family. The giant disappeared out the front door.

Jones rolled over onto his belly. He planted his face straight down onto the brick hearth and screamed. The depths of hell opened up in his gut and rolled out through his larynx and lips. Jones vowed to save his family, and kill every single last one of these giant monsters in the world.

Chapter Six

The Twins

“Listen Joru, I don’t care where the bodies come from. Warzones, prisons, kidnappings off the street. It doesn’t matter to me. The fact is, your company is under contract with our organization to deliver another seventy thousand bodies by next week.” Boul paced in a circle in his high rise apartment, which overlooked Manhattan. It was well past sunset, and glowing city bustled below. He wasn’t pleased with this conference call. “We can easily find another company to work with. I have contacts throughout the world, hungry for the chance to provide services to the Orobu.”

“The conflict in Syria can’t last forever,” Joru said. He leaned back in an old leather chair. His Moscow apartment was musty and small, especially for an oligarch of his status. “We’ve got scouts strategically placed on every continent right now, scrounging up bodies any and every which way possible. Give us time, Boul. You know that we have delivered before.”

“We don’t have time for excuses,” Boul said. “We’ve got more than sixty thousand Orobu giants roaming this planet right now. They need a steady, risk free food source. This isn’t the 19th century, Joru. We can’t just be out there in villages slaughtering kids in the night. This is the information age. Our kind must stay underground, silent, unseen. At least for now.”

Joru was getting one of the finest blowjobs of his life from a Bulgarian redhead. He looked down and saw how dedicated and concentrated she was on the task at hand. “Our contacts in Iraq give us hope,” Joru said. “We’re working with various intelligence agencies that say there will be a renewed insurgency, very brutal, in the coming months. They call the group ISIS. They work under the banner of fundamental Islam, but their motivation is strictly financial.”

“There are immediate needs,” Boul said.

“The Los Zetas cartel has reupped with us,” Joru said. He ran his grubby, fat hands through  the soft red hair of the Bulgarian. He was lying. The cartel had just promised to resist the
gigantes
 going forward.
 “They promise a thousand corpses by Friday.”

Boul smiled. His giant tongue slithered out and ran across his dry lips. “My favorite.”

Joru smiled, too. He was glad that he got a positive response from Boul. The Bulgarian’s hard work wasn’t hurting either. “That’s right,” he said. “A thousand peasants, gangsters, migrants. Straight from the sunbaked land of Mexico.”

“I’ve heard there are opportunities in your own country,” Boul said. “Tell me about the conflict in Ukraine.”

“Our special forces are on the ground now,” Joru said. “They’re picking up bodies here and there from the conflict. I’d say we can depend on five to six hundred every month. We can’t escalate the Ukraine situation quite yet. Stability is a necessary function of chaos. Keeping Europe conflict free is essential for our operations. The whole world can’t succumb to this madness.”

Boul was silent for a moment. He took it as an affront that Joru, who held no intrinsic power in his flabby, old body, felt it appropriate to lecture him on the ways of the world. Joru was a soulless profiteer who exploited the suffering of his own race, so that he may rise to the top of his society. He was the last man on earth Boul respected.

“I worry not about humanity’s affairs,” Boul said. “My task is to supply the Orobu race with fresh human bodies. I’ve been in this game long enough to have gone through hundreds, thousands of suppliers. I do not need you, Joru. I use you for a single task. Let that be clear.”

Joru relaxed his body and slouched in his leather office chair. The Bulgarian was bringing him to release. “You’ll get the bodies,” he said. “One way or another.”

“You have one week to deliver,” Boul said. “Or you, your family, and your entire corporation will be consumed by the Orobu.”

“Oh God,” Joru said, just as he was about to climax. “These idle threats are growing stale.”  

Boul clicked the end call button. His patience with Joru was wearing thin. Sixty thousand members of the Orobu race were depending on a steady stream of human bodies. The stress of fulfilling his people’s needs wore on him. He had been doing this far too long.

In the old days, every Orobu could fend for themselves. Groups of four or five would find a human settlement large enough to supply bodies through natural means. Some groups of Orobu were more daring, and would proactively capture, kidnap, and kill humans to satisfy their hunger.

In some of the larger cities on the planet--Damascus, Rome, Paris, London, Calcutta, Shanghai, Cairo--there were large orders of Orobu that profited heavily from the crimes of their human counterparts. The Orobu had their hands in all sorts of corruption and abuse. It wasn’t uncommon for the Orobu to get paid for assassination, mercenary work, or plain intimidation. From merchants to kings, humans of all spheres of influence would use the Orobu to further their own objectives.

Oftentimes the Orobu simply extorted the communities that they latched onto. They demanded payment from the ruling classes under threat of complete annihilation. The Orobu were not afraid to show up in the middle of the day at the town square. Throughout history, in all times and places, they were known to do just that. The peasants, farmers, and laborers of the lower classes were incredibly superstitious, and whole swaths of a country could break out into a frenzy of conspiracy and panic once the Orobu showed themselves in this fashion.

The kings and merchants and high priests paid the Orobu off to keep them in the shadows of the bogs, swamps, and forests. Over thousands of years the Orobu operated in this way, amassing a great deal of wealth and influence of their own.

The Orobu inspired a multitude of legends. They were gods, demons, titans, daityas, trolls, giants. Human memory of the Orobu was mythic and long. In the modern age, the faint recollection of the Orobu had projected itself into the zombie mythos. Little did human know how close they were to the apocalypse.

Radoula and Boul played unique roles in Orobu society. Although most of their race lived as warriors, Radoula and Boul were among the roughly five hundred Orobu who were merchants. These Orobu merchants dealt with humans directly to facilitate the needs of their race.

Radoula and Boul were born in the high mountains of Transylvania. Their parents were part of a tribe of Orobu that entered Europe by way of the steppes of Central Asia. They tagged along with nomadic barbarians, providing assistance to the pillaging and battles along the way. The tribe of Orobu took part in the spoils by feasting on the remains of fallen soldiers. At the time, this was payment enough.

The twins were highly respected in the ranks of the Orobu. For upwards of three millennia the twins worked closely with various networks of Orobu to ensure that the needs of the race were being met. They facilitated the harvesting of human bodies, and had worked with corrupt humans in power for millennia so that the Orobu could be fed.

Their tasks had grown over the last few years. Not only were they involved with instigating human conflict and transporting bodies out of war zones, but the twins were also proactively developing strategies to bring the Orobu back into a position of true, open global dominance.

It was hard work, and it taxed the twins tremendously.

To alleviate some of the stress, Boul and Radoula would engage in regular sessions of debauch. Tonight they planned to bring ten captive humans, an even mix of males and females, into their Manhattan high rise. The humans were all models, beautiful specimens of the human race. They were specially selected by Radoula and Boul themselves, and captured by their minions.

The monitoring system buzzed. It was one of the Orobu soldiers.

“Bring them up,” Boul said. “We’re ready.”

The twins were prepared for the evening’s festivities. They each wore silk robes, with nothing beneath. They tucked their thick red hair into tight top knots, for an elegant, fashionable look.

Radoula stood eight foot tall. Her frame was thin. But her breasts were massive, and so was her derriere. She was known to be particularly cruel and vicious. It had been said that she inspired Elizabeth Bathory and her reign of terror. Radoula carried herself with a noble air, and her face showed it. She possessed an insatiable erotic appetite, and indulged it whenever possible.

Boul was the same height as his sister. His body was thin for its size. In some ways, he was effeminate in the way he carried himself. But his imagination for debauch and horror was unparalleled. His heart was black as coal. He looked upon humanity with utter disdain, and this was reflected in his features. His eyes were yellowish, and so were his teeth. His tongue was a disgusting flap of grayish pink meat. It rolled out when he was excited with lust or anger.

The twin giants procured a dozen different street drugs. Cocaine, opium, ketamine, marijuana, LSD, Molly, and a hodgepodge of designer drugs. The bar was stocked with copious amounts of fine spirits, wines, and meads.

There was a knock at the door. Radoula whisked over to answer it. She opened the door, and admired the beauty she saw before her. The models were exactly what she was expecting. Of course she was more interested in the men than the women, but she noted that Boul had a fine taste as well.

“Welcome to our abode,” Radoula said. She bowed graciously. “Come on in. Make yourself comfortable. Tonight will sparkle. Tonight we will drink deep.”

The captives looked terrified. None of them knew what this was all about. They had been blindfolded since being captured. They hadn’t even seen the giants who kidnapped them. But they had a feeling that something wasn’t right. The way that the Orobu smelled, like rotten flesh; the way they spoke, stilted and slow. Everything about their captors hinted at something abnormal.

The blindfolds finally came off. Their suspicions were spot on. These were monsters.

Of course, the captives were under the impression that they’d be murdered. Little did they know murder would be preferable to what they were about to experience.

Boul turned on a record player. He had a penchant for old lounge singers from the fifties. Dean Martin’s singing “Ain’t that a Kick in the Head” echoed through the apartment. The irony of the song didn’t escape the captives. This whole scene was like taking a sledgehammer to the dome.

“Don’t be shy,” Boul hollered. “We’re not squares. Party favors inside. Come in and partake. Tonight, my abode is yours.”

The twins had seen it all, done it all before. Being part of the Orobu race meant sticking with ancient tradition. Human culture was looked at with disdain, generally. But no matter what era they were in, no matter the nation, the twins emulated the most fashionable, creative, despicable humans around them. They took pride knowing that they could keep the Orobu race alive, fulfilling their ancient duty, while still enjoying everything, for better or worse, that human civilization had to offer.

The Orobu guards prodded the models into the apartment. They were shaking, and some sobbed. One young man tried to run, but he had nowhere to go. The elevator was locked. The stairwell was, too. A guard slammed his fist into the young model’s skull. It cracked open, and he was left there to die.

This brutality spooked the captives even more. But the Orobu were prepared for that. The guards forced each captive to ingest a little white pill, which they called M-Candy. Radoula worked with a pharmaceuticals company to produce these pills, which put humans in an acute, impressionable fugue state. Upon ingestion, a human’s natural instincts would be dulled. Fear wasn’t completely eradicated, but it was effectively tempered. The chemical compound was related to scopolamine. Not more than five minutes after taking the M-Candy pills, which were forced under penalty of death, the captives were docile.