ZOMBIES: "Chronicles of the Dead": A Zombie Novel (21 page)

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ASSASSINS

Dusk was only an hour away when the outskirts of Shreveport came into view.

"This is the first night in weeks that we won't be sleeping in a boat," Gin said, seeming happy about the prospect.

"Maybe," I answered. "I had hoped we'd get here sooner than this, we need to find a secure place to sleep tonight, and we don't have very much time to find one."

"We can always sleep in the Hummer," Billy yelled down from the machine gun turret.

"Only if we absolutely have to," I yelled back. "We've been in this truck all day, and there's not much room, I would rather find some place better to sleep tonight, even if we have to find another boat to sleep in."

"Either way we better find somewhere fast, it's going to be dark soon, and I really don't want to be clearing houses, or buildings, or boats, or anything else in the dark," Jacob maintained adamantly, as he shook his head.

"We won't be clearing houses, or anything else in the dark, at least not tonight," I said, as I nodded my head in the direction of a large two-story brick house that was just ahead.

"It has an upstairs; I thought you said we weren't going into a house that has an upstairs, or a basement?" Billy asked.

"That's just for when we look for food and supplies; we need a secure place to sleep tonight. So we're going to clean this house of eaters, if there are any, and we're going to do it before it gets dark, and we'll bed down here tonight," I responded, as I pulled the Hummer into the circular driveway that ran in front of the house we intended to sleep in. Then I backed it in as close to the front door as I could.

"Everyone stay put, I'll check the front door, and watch for eaters," I ordered, as I slowly departed the safety of the driver's seat with my sickle in one hand, and my AK-47 in the other.

I hooked my sickle on the horizontal handle on the front door and pulled up, and then with the handle of the curved weapon I pushed down on it.

"Damn, it's locked, I'll try another door," I whispered to Gin.

"Be careful honey," she said, very concerned that I was walking around the yard alone.

"Wait, what about the rule about nobody goes anywhere alone?" Gin reminded sternly."We're not going to separate, remember?"

"Right, thanks for the reminder," I replied, already thinking the same thing.

Then motioning with my head, I said. "Billy, you come with me, and bring your AK."

"Don't get out of my sight," Gin reminded again.

"One of us will stay in view all the time," I promised.

"Make sure you do," Gin threatened with a glaring look.

Billy and I reconnoitered the situation, slowly walking to the corner of the house where the attached garage was located. As I turned the corner hoping to find an unlocked side door leading into the garage, I was immediately confronted by two zombies, one male, and one female. The female zombie reached out and grabbed me by my arm, and pulled me toward her, or it?

Before I could react, the head of the feminine zombie exploded onto the red brick wall of the garage. In the blink of an eye, the neck, head, and lower back of the male (masculine) zombie also exploded, sending blood, brain matter, intestines, pieces of bone, and an assortment of bodily fluids against the wall, onto the first dead zombie that lay at my feet, and onto me.

"Don't move mister, I don't want to kill you, but I will if you force me to," a gruff voice called out.

"
Now where have I heard that kind of rhetoric before
," I thought, remembering the words the river pirate's leader had spoken.

"I wouldn't think of moving, moving is the last thing on my mind," I stated, trying my best to act unafraid.

"Are you diseased, or is anyone with you diseased, or bit?" The voice asked, as a man pushed his way through a row of tall bushes where he had been hiding.

"Well I wasn't diseased, but now that you've slopped eater blood and guts all over me I'm not too sure," I said, being a little pissed off and unable to suppress my sarcasm.

"I'm not going to asked you again mister, are you or any of your party diseased?"

Thinking that this guy might not be in the mood for backtalk, I decided to play it straight with him.

"No, nobody's sick or bit, or undead," I answered, now more angry than afraid.

"Well not yet anyway," the man laughed. "You all are lucky we came along," he said, as five more men and two women stepped into the open.

"I think I'm lucky you people are such good shots, otherwise you might be talking to a dead man right now," I contended, looking back at Billy.

"That your family with you?" the man asked, walking slowly toward us.

"Yes it is sir, we don't mean you any harm," I said, unsuccessfully trying to convince the group that we were docile.

"Mister, if we thought you had any intention of doing us harm, we wouldn't be having this conversation," the man said, very convincingly I might add.

"We call ourselves the Assassins, although we don't regularly kill people, I mean unless we have to, just the ones that are already dead are the ones that we're after. That's why you still have possession of your firearms. We saw you come into town, and you just happened to pull up right next to the area that we were harvesting," the man claimed.

"What's your name mister," I asked the man, thinking back to what happened on the river, when I asked another man the same question.

Before he could answer, I said. "My name is Jack, this is my son Billy. My wife Gin, and my other son Jacob are in the Hummer."

"My name is Frank, last names don't mean too much anymore. Let's mosey on over to your truck, but first tell that boy manning that Gatling gun of yours, to stand down, we're friendly folk," Frank insisted.

I turned toward the Hummer, and called to Jacob.

"Jake, don't shoot, were coming over!"

Billy and I led the way to our truck, followed by Frank and the seven other
assassins
.

"It's going to be dark soon, you people need to come with us back to our camp, it's not safe around here," Frank explained.

"I'll ride with them," he told the others. "The rest of you, get back to the fortress, I'll meet you there, now get moving."

As Frank crawled into the back of our Hummer, he said chuckling, as if his comment was a joke.

"You drive, and hey, if you people kill me, none of you will make it out of this town alive! You have my word on that."

I laughed at Frank's aphorism, as I too climbed into the truck, but we all knew that Frank wasn't joking.

An eerie silence engulfed the inside of our vehicle from the first moments of the ride, to the very last, only interrupted by the directional orders barked by Frank as he guided us out of the neighborhood, and to what I hoped would be a safe haven for at least that night.

We drove for a few blocks in a westerly direction, not daring to even whisper of any plans of how we might handle Frank and his people for fear Frank would overhear us.

It wasn't long before we came to the outskirts of a commercialized area, and Frank directed me to turn into the parking lot of a big-box membership store.

"Go around to the back, by the dumpster," Frank ordered.

I followed his instructions, and pulled up facing a huge sliding metal track door.

"Honk your horn, two short beeps," Frank prompted. "And I mean short beeps, we don't want to bring any unwanted company to our door."

I complied with Frank's request, and within seconds, the large garage type door before us began to open.

"Drive in and park over there," Frank mandated, pointing to an open spot between a minivan and a large military truck.

We had just meant Frank and his friends, and I wasn't to the point in our relationship where I trusted him. We were outnumbered back at the brick house, and even though we could have killed some of his people, we would have been committing suicide had we fired upon his group. His comment, that if he were killed, we wouldn't make it out alive, told me that we were being watched all the way to our present location, probably by snipers. I felt we had no choice, it was dark now, and Frank had let us keep our weapons, however uneasy I felt, I drove my family into the building as Frank had directed.

Within the confines of the thick concrete walls of the once thriving retail club store, the casual demeanor of the people we initially saw conveyed an atmosphere of calm to us. The only guards in view were placed on either side of the door we had entered through, setting high atop pallets of store merchandise. However, of the several people in the room, nobody was devoid of some kind of a weapon.

"You can stay here tonight and maybe for a couple of days, but not any longer," Frank explained. "It might look like we have a lot of supplies, but we also have forty-seven people to feed, forever."

"
Or until they get killed
," I thought.

"We did have forty-nine until three days ago," Frank informed me. "And sixty-four before that."

"What happened three days ago?" I asked, finally breaking my silence.

"Three days ago, Sally and Kevin got careless, we were out on a search and destroy mission similar to the one we were on when we found you and your family. Those two for some reason, decided to break one of our cardinal rules. They broke off from the group and began searching a building alone," Frank said, shaking his head.

"Eaters get'em?" I asked.

"We call them Out-Breakers," Frank answered. "But to answer your question. No, another bunch killed them. Live people, we're not the only organized bunch; there are some other groups in this town."

"Probably every town of any size in the whole country, maybe the whole world, has more than just one group, and they, like us, are all probably fighting with each other. One group of people always wants something the other group has," Frank continued.

"Counting Sally and Kevin, we've lost a total of twelve people to the living, and five more to the out-breakers. The live ones are the most dangerous, out-breakers, or as you call them eaters, don't shoot guns and they don't carry weapons, except for their teeth," Frank insisted. "Sally and Kevin were just the last to go, and they died because they were stupid. We have rules for a reason, and they broke the rules, and now they're both dead," Frank explained, noticeably upset.

I never knew Sally or Kevin, and I didn't really give a shit if they were dead or not, but I didn't want to lather up Frank any more than he already was, so I said to him applying my best empathetic face.

"I'm sorry for your group's loss Frank. We have the same stick together rule. We were actually practicing that rule when we ran into you and your people."

"You're safe here for the night, and tomorrow you can decide whether or not you want to rest up here for a couple of days, maybe even go on a search and destroy mission with us before you hit the road again," Frank suggested.

I had no intention of going out on some, as he called it, search and destroy mission, with a bunch of strangers armed to the teeth. So I responded to Franks offer by saying.

"I'll talk it over with Gin and the boys, but she is pretty set on moving on to Texas. She has family there and she wants to join up with them if we can."

None of what I said was true, but I felt I needed to say something that would give us an excuse to get the hell out of there when the time was right.

"Well we've rigged up a gas generator to the electrical box, so we have lights in most of the building, and we have another one hooked to the freezers so the frozen food won't rot. No heat or air-conditioning yet, and we haven't gotten to the gas pumps yet either, but we're working on that. At any rate, let me introduce you to some of our people," Frank insisted, as he led us over to a man and woman standing by a pallet of diet soda.

The man was tall and muscular with short brown hair, a bushy mustache, and a serious five o'clock shadow. He was wearing a blue jump suit with the name Mike embroidered onto a patch sewn above the left front pocket.

We could see the footprint of a large frame automatic pistol that he had stuck in his right side pocket, and his rifle, an old Russian made SKS that had been imported from an eastern bloc nation that no longer needed it, was lying on top of the pallet beside him.

The woman was medium height, thin, well built, with bleach blonde hair with six or seven weeks of dark roots showing. She was sporting a shoulder holster that housed a revolver that looked too big for her to handle, but who am I to judge.

Both of them paid little attention to us as we approached.

"This is Mike and Sondra, they were janitors working over night here when this whole end of the world thing came about," Frank explained.

Mike was still wearing his janitorial uniform, but Sondra was far too well dressed to be on the job as a custodian, so I figured she had appropriated her wardrobe from the sales floor. I can't blame her for that, everybody else is taking whatever they want, including us. The old rules don't apply in this new paradigm.

"Hi, I'm Jack, and this is my wife Gin, and these two are Billy and Jacob, they are my sons," I said with a smile, introducing my family to Mike and Sondra.

The two were civil with their greetings, but quickly turned away from us, engaging each other in conversation, and making it clear to all that they had no interest in becoming friends with us anytime soon.

Frank introduced us to every person that was holed up in that building that night. Some seemed happy to meet us, others, not so much.

Some were concerned that we might be thinking of staying, and others concern that we might be thinking of leaving. Frank had already made it clear to us that we would be leaving, however I saw no reason to mention that to any of his people.

The leader of the so-called assassins guided us over to a display of camping equipment that had been set up in the middle of the store prior to the apocalypse.

"You and your family can sleep here tonight. Get settled in and I'll be back later, and then we can talk," Frank stated as he walked away.

Gin looked around, wondering if any of the assassins were watching us.

"What are we going to honey?" She asked.

"Yeah dad, what are we going to do?" Jacob added, as he sat down on one of the cots.

"We better do what we've been doing, namely, keep a lookout tonight, take the same shifts as usual, and try not to look too obvious, we don't know these people and some of them weren't too friendly when we were introduced. If we're not careful, we could wake up dead," I asserted. "So for now, keep your weapons close to you at all times, just like we've been doing. Except for killing them, we need to treat them as if they're eaters, keep your guard up at all times. Don't think for a moment that it was a coincidence that Frank put us out here in the middle of the store. This camping equipment isn't the only thing on display."

We each picked out the spot that we would be spending the night, and it wasn't long before Frank, came back, and he had brought Mike and Sondra with him.

"You've meant Mike and Sondra, they're second in command around here. We brought you people some good food to eat, I figured you people most likely haven't had a real cooked meal for quite some time," Frank said, as he and the janitorial crew handed out plates heaping with steaming meat and vegetables.

"There's no shortage of barbequed meat around here, we've got plenty of propane tanks and brand new grills, eat up," Frank urged.

We looked around at each other, everyone silently asking the same question. Is the food poison, or drugged?

Frank shook his head and stabbed a fork into my steak.

"If we wanted to kill you, you'd already be dead," he said, just before taking a big bite of the meat he had pulled from my plate.

"It's good that you're cautious though," he added. "We could use a little more of that around here sometimes.

I thought that remark was rather strange, coming from a man that had let a group of armed strangers into his stronghold.

"We didn't get this far from home by being careless," I stressed, not willing to mention some of the careless and thoughtless mistakes we had made along the way.

Frank plopped my steak back down onto my plate, his fork now standing erect in the middle of the meat, and with a loud gulp, he swallowed.

"You said your people are assassins, and you go out on search and destroy missions. What exactly does that mean?" I asked, handing Franks fork back to him.

"Like I told you before, we don't kill humans unless they attack us first; we try to help them if we can, just like we're helping you now," Frank insisted.

"The out-breakers, now that's a different story, we try to eliminate as many of them as we can.

Our reasoning is this; there hasn't been a lot of people traveling through this city like you and your family are. That makes the population a finite number for the most part, living or dead.

It's true if you get infected, or just plain die, you turn into one of those things. But we think we can control that to a certain extent by being vigil and aggressive when the need arises. We go on search and destroy missions, and put down as many of the diseased ones as we can find, acting on the theory that once we get rid of all of them, we will be able to manage with relative ease any strays that happen to wander into town. And if we deal with the people that die of natural causes or accidental death immediately, we will be able to sustain some semblance of a normal life. At least that's the theory," Frank explained.

"Why call yourselves assassins, why not exterminators, or eradicators, or maybe eliminators?" I inquired, as my curiosity was getting the best of me.

"When we first started the process, the three of us decided that it would be better to first give ourselves a name. That way we would bond every member to part of a team, which would help maintain a sense of esprit de corps within the group. We didn't want some warm and fuzzy name like the cupcake brigade, we felt that a name like assassins was more suited to the grisly tasks that had to be preformed, and there would be no second guessing about what the assassins were all about, thus mentally helping us deal with the psychological trauma involved," Frank elucidated.

"That's pretty cerebral coming from a couple of janitors," I quipped with a smile.

Mike and Sondra had remained quiet up to this point, and then Mike leaned over and put his face within twelve inches of mine, stared at me with a cold glare that would freeze molten rock, while saying snidely.

"You people seen much combat?"

His threatening demeanor brought out the ex-marine in me and I immediately responded by saying.

"If by combat, you mean having your dead neighbors break through your back door and try to eat you alive, while getting the pleasure of letting your two young sons watch as you splatter chunks of their brains all over your wife's kitchen? Or having to shoot your way out of your own home, as half of the people that were once your friendly neighbors, try to kill and eat you as well.

Or are you referring to having to hack your way through ten or fifteen eaters with these sickles, hewing off heads and limbs as you go, while trying to escape from a stranger's barn," I replied sarcastically (it's one of my many gifts you know), describing a few of the horrible circumstances we had encountered along the way.

This was the first time that we'd seen Mike actually smile.

"I think I like you," he chuckled, backing away from me.

"Don't be too hasty," I joked. "I haven't even mentioned the river pirates, or the speedboat eaters, or the stench of the river that was enough to puke a maggot off a gut wagon," I said, again proudly employing the same gift as before.

Now both Mike and Sondra laughed.

"I like you too," Sondra agreed.

"It's too bad we can't let you stay here," she claimed.

"It's okay, Frank already told us we can't stay, and we're fine with it, we've got places to go, and people too see," I said, sticking to my earlier lie.

"Tell us about the humans, earlier you mentioned other living people," I asked, subtly trying to collect some intelligence about the other groups that occupied part of the town.

Mike and Sondra stopped smiling as Frank replied.

"Remember back at the house, I told you that if you killed me, you wouldn't make it out of town alive."

"I remember that," Billy spoke up.

"We all remember that," Gin replied, adding her own brand of sarcasm. "That was right neighborly of you."

Raising an eyebrow and glancing at Gin, a slight smile cracked the straight line of Frank's lips as he explained further.

"Well it wasn't just because I had people watching you through the crosshairs of their sniper rifles. Sure, they would have killed you, without a doubt. But even if they hadn't, the odds are you would have either been killed or captured by one of the marauding bands that hold certain parts of the city. If you don't take a specific route back to the highway, you end up traveling through their turf, and I'm confident that they would put an end to you one way or another. You're lucky you ran into us first."

"So what's your theory on them, I mean after you clear the town of eaters?" I asked.

"At some point we'll have to deal with them totally. We run across them from time to time, but so far our numbers have been equal too, or greater than theirs have been, so they usually leave us alone," Frank explained.

"
Usually? Say usually a couple of more times, and there won't be any of your people left
," I thought to myself, thinking of the twelve dead members of the assassins that had been killed by maunders.

"What about your sniper's, do they stay out all night?" I asked, thinking that's a job I certainly didn't want.

"No, they follow us in after ever mission, as a matter of fact, they got back while we were cooking your food," Frank confirmed.

"By the way Mike, you know those lights we've been seeing at night?" Frank asked.

Mike nodded.

"Well, Jim saw one tonight, and Rick's team reported seeing the weird shadows yesterday." Frank told him.

"Weird shadows?" Jacob asked.

"What do you mean weird shadows?" Gin broke in. "That sounds creepy to me."

"Creepier than a zombie apocalypse mom, really?" Billy challenged, tilting his head down, raising his eyebrows, and staring at her.

Frank then interjected.

"Since this thing started, some of us have been seeing these strange lights at night and shadows during the day. I've seen them myself, well kind of, you never really see them. You'll see a light or a shadow out of the corner of your eye, and when you turn your head to look at it, it'll be gone. Or if you're outside sleeping, or about to go to sleep, the light seems even brighter, and when you open your eyes to see what it is, it's gone. They're never inside, at least not yet; they're
always
outside, so far anyway."

"I've seen them, the first time was within minutes of the start of this catastrophe, I thought it was a news helicopter, but thinking back there wasn't any noise and the gaps in the tree tops couldn't have totally blocked my view.

Then again on the river, I almost fell asleep on my watch and was awakened by a bright light that was gone when I opened my eyes," I recalled.

"You almost fell asleep on your watch?" Jacob prompted.

"Yes once, and only once, and
almost
is the key word here," I answered, defending my indefensible position.

Frank quickly interposed. "It's getting late, get some sleep now, and we'll talk some more in the morning."

The three leaders of the assassins stood up and walked away, Frank stopped momentarily, turned to me, and with a big grin on his face, he said. "Cerebral? Before this zombie war, I was a psychologist."