The Regulators - 02 (9 page)

“
Were things different
with Katie and Jason with you
?”

It wasn’t just Katie and Jason, somewhere along the lines we
picked up some more people. I was introduced to a chubby guy named Ruben, who
was a janitor for the hotel. A teenage girl named Martha who watched her entire
family get devoured; and a business man named Charlie, who happened to be
staying in the hotel when things went down just like I had been.

They were all pretty impressed by my performance. Jason
couldn’t stop talking about how I fought off all the zombies. I could tell he
was terrified. It was probably just his way of dealing with things.

“
What do you mean
?”

Well, he was acting like I was some sort of hero. I think
that maybe in very bad times it helps to have a hero. I didn’t feel like much
of a hero, in fact I felt pretty scared. I just wasn’t going to let anyone know
that.

Ruben was smart enough to freeze up the elevator on our
floor, so it couldn’t move. He was also smart enough to seal the stairway. Somehow
Martha, Ruben and Charlie had been together since the dead came back. I kind of
tuned out when they were sharing their stories with Katie. They had holed up a
few floors below us, but when they saw the elevator move on our return trip
they decided to go investigate the floor it landed on.

They used the stairway to reach us, and it was a good thing
they did it when they did. A few moments after Martha, Ruben and Charlie
reached our floor, the zombies found the door to the stairs on the ground
floor. They had flooded into the stairwell within moments.

From the noise levels echoing through the walls, ceilings
and floors the only safe place in the entire hotel was probably the floor we
were currently occupying.

We were trapped.

Fortunately, they had more food with them. Even better, we
now had some weapons. Ruben had a Smith and Wesson .38 special and Charlie had
a baseball bat and a big fireman’s axe. I chose the axe. I wasn’t a fan of the
large red handle, but the black coating over the metal blade area looked pretty
cool.

I would rather have taken the .38, but no amount of bribing
could make Ruben part with it.

“
How long did the six
of you stay there
?”

It was kind of hard to keep track of time, but it was a few
weeks at least, maybe more. The only reason we left is because we ran low on
food.

“
Did anyone know about
the EPUA website
?”

Martha had heard about it. She probably got her information
from the TV, before the stations went off the air. All of us were curious about
it. None of us knew what was happening outside the floor of our hotel. We could
see things from the windows, of course, but they weren’t pretty things.

“
What did you see
?”

We saw an army of zombies. We saw blood on the streets and
rotting corpses. I actually spent most of a day watching a zombie with two
broken legs crawl down the sidewalk one time.

It was depressing. We were basically just waiting to die.
Eventually, the time came when we were so low on food that it became mandatory
to replenish our supplies. Someone would need to leave the safety of our sealed
off floor.

I volunteered.

I knew where the kitchen was, and I knew where I had left
the pillowcases full of canned food. Ruben agreed to come with me just in case
I got turned around. He also knew where the hotel manager kept a laptop. We
were all anxious to find out what was going on in the world.

I watched Ruben engage the elevator and down we went.

The trip was over way too quickly. I wasn’t at all anxious
to run for my life again while fighting off what was now more than likely hundreds
of zombies.

The situation was terrible. I wasn’t all too convinced that
starvation was worse than being eaten.

When the doors opened on the ground floor, my heart was
threatening to burst out of my chest. Fortunately, the hall was deserted.

I followed Ruben as he led me down the quickest path to the
pillowcases full of food. I jokingly whispered to him that he didn’t even need
me and for all the good I was doing, I might as well just wait for him in the
elevator. He laughed at that and squeezed my arm.

“You’re the hero here, my friend,” he said. “I may know the
way to the food, but I may also need your muscles to get us there.”

I didn’t like the idea of everyone seeing me as the tough
guy. Like I said before, I wasn’t feeling very tough. I gripped the handle of
my axe very tightly. I was determined not to let him down, no matter how I was
truly feeling.

I used the axe four times in order for us to get to the
food. In all four times, we were lucky and had the element of surprise.
Therefore, there were no screams. We didn’t want them to scream. Screams led to
more zombies. Too many zombies and Ruben and I were going to die.

After the food was gathered up, we headed to the manager’s
office. Ruben pulled the laptop out of the desk drawer along with a power cable.
All of it and some of the manager’s personal items were safely secured in a
nylon case complete with a shoulder strap. I carried the laptop along with most
of the food.

“
Did you gather more
food along with the pillowcases full of cans
?”

Yeah, we were pretty set. We gathered up enough to last us
about a month and maybe more if we rationed them properly. After those ran out,
we were out of luck. At that point, the kitchen was empty.

The attack came when we reached the elevator.

Ruben and I were busy marveling about how easy things had
been. We were amazed at how much food we had gathered. We were just happy to
have succeeded.

The corpse came at us as soon as Ruben stepped into the
elevator behind me. He was joking around and pretending that he was having
problems dragging the large trash bag he was carrying through the door.

The zombie was moving so fast that he actually collided with
the one side of the elevator doors before he fell on top of Ruben and tore into
his stomach.

Ruben screamed. I will never forget the sound of that
scream. I will never forget the way he reached out for me as if I could help
him. Once the bite punctures the flesh, it’s all over.

There was blood all over the floor by the time I managed to
pull the zombie off of him. I threw the corpse against the wall opposite the
elevator. It was a young man. He was probably in his early twenties. There
wasn’t a mark on him except for the bite on his hand.

He screamed and charged at me. I swung my axe and took him
off his feet. I stomped my foot on his neck in order to retrieve my weapon. I
enjoyed the crunching sound the weapon made as I pulled it free.

Three more zombies responded to the call. They were rushing
down the hallway as I stepped back inside the elevator and closed the doors.

Ruben died on the ride back to our floor. Later that night
he came back and I killed him again.

Up until that moment, they had all been faceless and unknown
to me. It’s a different feeling when you know them. It’s not a good feeling. I
liked Ruben. I liked him a lot.

Nobody ever asked what happened. Nobody said a single word
the rest of that day. I threw my clothes away; they were covered in Ruben’s
blood.

It took another week or so before we even remembered the
laptop.

“
Is that when you
first heard about the General
?”

Yes, but we didn’t pay much attention to the rumors at
first. We were more concerned with how the rest of the world was dealing with
things. Imagine our surprise when we realized it was only in El Paso. On one
hand, it was great news. If we ever got out of here, we would be safe. On the
other hand, we had the misfortune enough to be stuck at ground zero when the
undead bomb went off.

The people on the website were really nice. They patiently
answered all our questions. They were genuinely happy that we were alive. Some
of those people were trapped just like we were. Some were as of yet
undiscovered but had nowhere to run to.

“Don’t worry,” they wrote. “The General is real.”

“He’s going to save everyone.”

“He’s ten feet tall.”

“The zombies are afraid of him.”

“I’ve seen him; he drove by my house.”

“I know his real name, but I’m not telling.

“He’s just a legend. He isn’t real.”

So many random thoughts kept scrolling along the page. At
first, I ignored them. I was only interested in having my many questions
answered, but the people just kept writing about him. They never stopped.

Day in and day out, they never stopped.

I began to wonder if such a man truly existed. I wondered
how he found the courage to stand up to these things and fight back. I mean,
I’m not a weak man by any means. I couldn’t even tell you how many fist fights
I’ve been in during my life. I don’t scare easily, but these things…these
things…they’re monsters.

I read about his Safe Zone. I knew the location. Georgie’s
house was right in the middle. I wrote to Georgie, but with so many messages
scrolling by it was no surprise that he never responded.

“
When did you first
realize that the General was Jaxon
?”

When he and Dudley went and rescued that punk-ass Tito.
There was no lead up or warning. None of that shit. He was just suddenly there,
on the EPUA website, asking Georgie how to blow up a stove or some shit. I
recognized Georgie’s screen name. He hadn’t bothered to change it since
college.

It took a bit, but I made the connection. The General was
rescuing Tito and blowing up a building in the process. Georgie’s house was
located inside the Safe Zone. Jaxon had to be the General. Who else knew both
Tito and Georgie and also had enough balls to do the kind of shit that he was
attempting.

“
So your old college
pal was the General. What were you thinking
?”

It was unbelievable. I mean, back in the day, Jax was more
interested in getting laid than being any kind of leader. I realize that other
people who met him later have different opinions, but many, many girls will
tell you the same thing. Back then, he was only interested in having a good
time.

“
Why do you think
other people feel so differently
?”

Probably because he’s so damn famous. I mean, don’t get me
wrong. He was undoubtedly highly intelligent. He outsmarted just about
everybody. He just tended to use his intelligence to play practical jokes and
to harass his friends.

“
So you saw him mainly
as a pretty smart guy that liked to have fun and joke around
?”

Yeah, but those were really my initial thoughts. I could
also see him as a fighter. That was another thing he got involved in on a
somewhat regular basis. It wasn’t in his personality to back down from a fight.

He was also fiercely loyal to his friends. Their problems
were his problems. He wasn’t the type of guy to let his buddies down.

I started remembering these things and everything slowly
started to click together. The guy I knew in college, my fraternity brother if
you must know, had all these gifts and personality traits even back then. They
were the same traits that would one day assist him in his role as a hero. Of
course he wasn’t making any beneficial use of his gifts and personality traits
back in those days, but they were there. They were just waiting for him to grow
up and become a leader. It’s those aspects of his personality that make him so
effective.

Still, I was floored.

I had to laugh at
that. I heard a roughly a similar story from Ivana. It’s nothing new, but it is
entertaining to hear people tell me what Jaxon was like before he became the
General
.

“
After all that you
just told me, why were you still floored
?”

I guess it’s just weird to think that you know the guy
everybody was talking about. Hell I knew all of the Regulators. Jaxon, Georgie,
Tito and I all went to the same college. I knew Dudley since he was a kid and I
met Javie and Kingsley through Jaxon before I moved away. Jaxon and I kept up
with each other after I moved as well. It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen him in a
long time. If I came into town, we would hang out, and he was always talking
smack to me over the internet. We even went to his parent’s cabin in Ruidoso
one weekend so I could take my son skiing. My son and Jaxon got along famously
by the way. It’s funny, because Jaxon normally doesn’t relate very well to kids.

I guess it was when he blew up Tito’s apartment complex that
things really sunk in for me. I just remember going to the nearest window that
faced the West side. Everyone in my group followed me. I guess we all wanted to
see what would happen. They were all pretty excited when I told them I knew the
General and that he was about to do something crazy.

All of us crowded by the window. I told them where to look
and we waited. I never told them what was going to happen, I just told them to
watch.

BOOM!

We could see the mushroom cloud rise up into the sky. It was
a beautiful sight. All of us started dancing around. That explosion meant
something to all of us. It meant that the General was real. It meant that all
of us could once again dare to hope. To hope for a rescue, to hope for a way
out, you name it, we could once again dream it.

It meant that we were no longer just waiting to die,
because, and this is important, there’s one other thing I forgot to tell you
about Jaxon. He’s a stubborn guy. He’s so stubborn, he just doesn’t know when
to quit. I knew he wasn’t going to stop fighting. That explosion was a
declaration of war, and Jaxon was going to win.

Once again, Nick had
managed to shock me. His eyes began to well up, and his voice began to crack as
he told me this last bit of information about his friend. I didn’t think he was
the type of man to get emotional, but I have long since realized that Jaxon’s
deeds can often have an emotional impact upon even the hardest of people.