The Regulators - 02 (10 page)

I gave him a few
moments to get himself together. I could tell he was embarrassed, but he wasn’t
the first to become emotional when discussing those days
.

So where were we?

“
You were talking
about the Jaxon that you knew in college and how
…”

Yeah, whatever, I wasn’t crying, so don’t think that. I was
never able to get through to him or that idiot Georgie. There were too many
people asking for help. I got lost in the shuffle. I tried pretty hard, but in
the end, no luck.

We followed EPUA almost religiously as the days went by.
Everyone was excited when Jaxon came Downtown. They thought he had come to
rescue everyone.

“
Everyone
?”

Oh yeah, we were far from being the only group of people who
were trapped. We used to communicate with different buildings by blinking our
lights. It was nice to know that there were others.

It also gave me a fair amount of hope. There was a decent
chance that one of those other buildings held some decent looking women.

I didn’t, however, harbor any hope of being rescued by
Jaxon. One look out my window and I knew those odds would prove insurmountable
for him. There were just too many zombies on the streets, and they were always
on the move. One day we would only see about twenty, but on the next day, there
would be hundreds down there.

Jaxon himself wouldn’t be able to clear out that area. There
was no way. He was coming for a look. He wanted to see how many zombies were in
the area. He would probably be driving his Jeep. Jax only drives two types of
vehicles, by the way, and those are Harleys and Jeeps. Regardless, neither one
of them were big enough for any kind of rescue mission.

There were gunshots when he was in the area. We knew it was
him even before we saw the square taillights of his Jeep. We also saw the
massive legion of zombies he led out of the area. At the time, I literally
thought he was crazy. I mean, what was he trying to accomplish? Leading zombies
around like that was crazy.

“
He was trying to
reduce the numbers of undead, so the people trapped in the area would have a
better chance
.”

You’re right, and he certainly gave me a better chance. The
minute I saw that mob moving away from the area I was in action. I was
gathering up the little bit of food we still had left, which wasn’t very much
mind you. A pretty decent amount of time had passed between when Ruben and I
had gathered up the food till the time Jax led the zombies out of the area.

I quickly informed everyone of my plan as I packed. They
thought I was crazy. Charlie wanted to wait for help. I told him that help had
just arrived and we were going to take advantage of it.

With much respect, I grabbed Ruben’s .38 special. I loaded
the gun rapidly and pocketed the extra box of ammo we had found in his few
belongings.

I pretty much shoved everyone into the elevator. I wanted to
be moving. I didn’t want to give them any time to think about what we were
going to do and begin to panic. We took the elevator all the way down to the
parking garage.

They were on us as soon as the elevator doors had opened.

There were probably about twenty or so of them just wandering
around down there. They screamed at us and charged. I chopped and chopped with
my axe. Charlie swung his bat, even Martha and Katie did their part with my old
bar stool legs. We kept Jason safe. That was the important thing. Not one of
those suckers could get near him.

I dragged him behind me the entire way. That was the basic
idea behind my plan. We would never stop. No matter how many of them came at us
we were never going to stop. We would just keep pushing forward until we
reached our destination.

The screams brought more of them. I could hear them in the
distance; the screams, the moans, the sounds of running feet slapping against
the concrete. If too many of them reached us, we weren’t going to make it.

Martha was the first person we lost. I can’t really tell you
how it happened. There were just too many of them. All it took was one to grab
a hold and drag her down. She screamed for help, Charlie tried, he really
tried. By the time he fought his way to her, she had stopped screaming.

So we ran.

We ran, and I swung my axe at anything stupid enough to get
in my way. I can’t tell you the elation I felt when I saw my truck. My key ring
was wrapped around one of my fingers. I was ready to go. Thank God the battery
wasn’t dead as I remotely unlocked the doors.

I remember Jason and Katie diving in the cab as Charlie and
I held off our pursuers. I remember trying to shove Charlie in as well and the
look he gave me as the last of the zombies fell to the ground.

Time froze still for just a brief moment. Charlie should
have been happy. We were almost home free. Instead, he looked miserable. His
eyes left my face and moved down towards his hand. I followed his gaze and saw
the bite mark. I don’t know when he was bitten, I never saw it happen.

At that moment another wave of zombies had entered the
parking garage. There must have been hundreds of them. Charlie looked over at
all of them as they rushed towards us. Then he looked back towards me with the
saddest look on his face.

“We almost made it, didn’t we?” he asked.

I knew what he was thinking. I knew what he was going to do.

I punched him right in the gut and threw him into the cab of
my truck.

“Day ain’t over,” I said.

Now Jaxon may prefer his Jeep, but I’m a big fan of Chevy
trucks with big ole V-8 engines. I can’t say that I plowed through the zombies
because that would have damaged the vehicle. I can’t say that I crawled over
them either. I’m not sure how to describe my pace. All I can tell you is that I
went fast enough to not get trapped by them and slow enough that I didn’t
damage the vehicle and trap us all.

In just a short time, we were free and headed to the Safe
Zone.

We were reaching Sunland Park Dr. when Charlie started
getting sick. His bite was worse than I thought. The garage was pretty dark,
but as the sun rose in the sky I could see just how bad the damage was. Two of
his fingers were barely hanging on. He was in a lot of pain and the wound was
already infected. Actually, that was an understatement. The wound had just
about the worst infection I’ve ever seen in my life.

I pulled off on Sunland and drove up to an old house I used
to rent with my first wife. It didn’t have a lot of windows, and the few it had
were small. The place would be pretty secure.

I backed into the driveway, hopped out of the truck, jumped
the fence and broke down the back door. I then ran into the garage and opened
the automatic garage door by pushing the button on the side of the wall.

After the truck was safely hidden inside the garage, we
carried Charlie into one of the bedrooms. Katie did her best to clean the
wound, while I ransacked the house looking for painkillers. Luck wasn’t with
me. Poor Charlie would have to suffer.

Katie wanted to check the EPUA website, when we remembered
that Martha had been carrying the laptop. It was gone, and I wasn’t going to go
back for it.

We spent the rest of that day keeping Charlie quiet. He was
turning; it was just taking a long time. I couldn’t stand seeing him in so much
pain. It was horrible. The thought of making it to the Safe Zone was still
there, but to even consider moving Charlie was unthinkable.

By the second day, his breathing had become labored. He
wasn’t able to take in any fluids and he was in so much pain he could barely
talk.

“You need to leave me,” he said when I went to check on him.

“I can’t leave you like this Charlie.”

“I don’t want you to,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I’m not going to get any better. I don’t want to turn into
one of those things. It hurts Nick. It hurts a lot. Be a pal.”

I knew immediately what he wanted. For a moment, I thought I
wouldn’t be able to do it. Then I realized I was being selfish. I was only
thinking about myself. My friend was suffering, and he needed me.

I pulled the .38 out of my waistband and covered it with a
pillow. The gunshot was muffled, but it was loud enough to bring Katie running
into the room.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I couldn’t let him suffer anymore,” I answered.

Then I began to sob.

Like I said before, I’d been in plenty of brawls in my time,
but I had never before given anyone a serious injury. I was having some trouble
coping with what I had just done. Was it the right thing to do? I don’t know.
All I know is that Charlie was suffering terribly, and I did what he asked me.

It took another day before I was able to function again.

“
You missed everyone
leaving the Safe Zone didn’t you
?”

Yeah, the bastards left without me. We had no way of knowing
that they were going to storm the gates and demand their freedom. I figured
that we had all the time in the world. It was my fault. I just needed time to
recover.

The fences were closed up tight when we arrived. There were
no zombies in sight. However, there were no living people in sight either. I
had no idea what was going on. I got the fences opened; I pulled my truck inside
the Safe Zone and parked it on the side of the street. There was plenty of food
left behind, not just in Georgie’s house, but in a few of the houses.

I started using Georgie’s computer. We found out that
everyone had left the area not long before we arrived at the gates. We had no
other choice but to sit and wait for help. As soon as it was announced that the
Regulators were coming back into El Paso in order to rescue all the survivors,
I started announcing our location.

I’ll be the first to admit that I was more than a little
pissed off. Talk about bum fucking luck. To go all that way and find the stupid
place deserted. To add insult to injury, I’m announcing our location over and
over and still getting lost in the shuffle of all the other survivors who were
also announcing their locations over and over.

By the time someone responded to me, the first thing I let
them know was that I was a friend of the General.

“
And then help arrived
?”

About two hours later, and it wasn’t Jaxon. It was his
little followers. After I outmaneuvered them and when they were through pissing
their pants, I brought out Katie and Jason. I had kept them hidden upstairs in
Georgie’s bedroom just in case something went wrong. Not that I thought
anything would go wrong; I just wasn’t going to take any chances with their
lives after everything that happened.

Once again I asked the question.

“So where’s Jaxon?”

“We kind of lost him,” Dudley said.

“You did what?”

“We lost him. I’m sure he’s fine, but we’re waiting to make
contact with him.”

“No wonder you assholes ignored me the first time I asked,”
I responded.

By the time everything was explained to me, the sun was
coming up, and it was too late to make an extraction. We decided to wait out
the day in Georgie’s house and head for the extraction point come sundown.

Georgie made a pretty decent fuss about not getting to sleep
in his own bedroom, but when I threatened to toss another bottle his way, he
grumbled off into his daughter’s room.

“Were you relieved when they showed up?”

Yes and no. I mean, I was relieved that Katie and Jason were
going to get out of that hellhole, but at the same time I was kinda worried
about Jaxon, and I could tell that the others were worried as well.

I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to leave the situation
in the hands of those guys. Dudley is a pretty cool guy, but the others aren’t
exactly considered tough guys under normal circumstances if you know what I
mean.

I wasn’t able to sleep. Part of me wanted on the next train
out of there, but the other part was telling me to stay and help Jaxon. I
wasn’t exactly a huge believer in him being all special at the time. I figured
that the guy just had a mean set of brass balls. I was a little surprised when
Georgie put his face under the faucet and the bruise I gave him kinda melted
away, but it still wasn’t enough to convince me that these guys were going to
have the kind of stones needed to find Jaxon.

An hour after sunset, all my worries were alleviated. Jaxon
found us, kind of.

We were inside the garage getting ready to hop into the
Jeep. I was arguing with Georgie because I wanted to drive. Georgie said I
wasn’t part of the team. I told him to stick his team up his ass. Dudley told
me to get in the back. I told him to get in the back. For a moment, it looked like
he was going to shoot me, and then the call came in.

“Jaxon, is that you?” Dudley said into his earpiece. “What’s
happening…we’re in the safe zone…yeah, we’ll be in the watchtowers.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Alright everybody, listen up,” said Dudley. “Jaxon is on
his way to us. He’s in some kind of trouble. I don’t know exactly what it is,
but he was shooting. So, we’re arming up and setting up on the two watchtowers
on either side of the gate. Once we see him drive up, we are to open fire on
whatever is chasing him.”

“What’s chasing him?” Kingsley asked.

“I don’t know; there was a lot of background noise, but
something’s after him. Now let’s move, because he gonna be here any minute.”

I sent Katie and Jason back inside Georgie’s house. I wanted
them safe and out of danger. Then, I grabbed the assault rifle in the back of
Jeep.

“How do you work this thing?” I asked Georgie.

“You should get inside the house,” Georgie answered. “This
is Regulator business.”

“How bout I just aim it at your balls and pull the trigger
till it fires?”

“Dudley!” he screamed like a little bitch.