ZOMBIE'S DOOM? "Chronicles of Jack Doom" (31 page)

"I will, but where do purpose to find a real man around here?" he asked, with a smile, prompting me to answer.

"Shut up and get out, you're burning my daylight," I answered, reaching for the chrome plated door handle on the older car.

Derek relinquished his seat and exited the automobile, making a glib comment as he walked by me.

"You know Jack, you make an excellent doorman."

I returned his disingenuous observation with an insincere comment of my own.

"Shut up!"

With our bonding session complete, I jumped behind the steering wheel of the three-speed contraption.

With my foot on the brake, I made sure that the key was turned to the
on
position. Then I pushed the clutch pedal all the way to the floor and forced the transmission into its reverse gear.

I let off the brake, and the flat black steel behemoth instantly began to lumber backwards down the gentle slope.

Just before the 50's icon began to level out at the bottom of the grade, I popped the clutch and felt the vehicle shutter.

Quickly shoving the clutch pedal back down to the floor, I heard the powerful inline 6-cylinder engine begin to roar.

Black smoke poured out of the single exhaust pipe as I pushed repeatedly on the accelerator.

"What's the fuel situation look like?" Derek choked out, as he fanned the dark exhaust fog that was drifting in front of his face.

"If the gauge works the tanks over half full," I answered smiling.

Cramming our new ride into 1st gear, I pulled the restored jalopy back up to the crest of the hill and onto the concrete road.

I maneuvered our new car around several of the vehicles that we had earlier rejected, or had rejected us, then parked and waited for Derek to join me.

Meanwhile, Derek dealt with two more zombies that at their own peril had chosen to menace him on his way to meet me, and had met their final doom at the business end of his meat cleaver.

After doling out the two well-deserved one-way tickets back to hell, Derek again caught up to me.

Driving the old Chevy like I stole it (because I did), and with Derek sitting shotgun (Cassandra's hollowed out jug would have been riding bitch, but was still in my pocket at this time), we headed back as fast as possible to the place where we had abandoned our truck, so we could reclaim the weapons and supplies that we had left there.

We were lucky enough to find a new working vehicle only a couple of miles from where the truck had broken down, so it was a short and quick trip back to retrieve our stuff.

Upon our arriving back at the truck, I decided to leave the car running as we hurried to transfer the weapons, chainsaw, and what was left of our supplies into the trunk of the zooted out old Chevy.

"Let's not take any chances, we'll let the battery charge up as much as possible before we shut this bad boy off," I declared.

"Good idea, I'd rather waste a little gas than have to push this heavy son-of-a-bitch with a bunch of ravenous bastards chasing us," Derek stressed, as he put the last of our assorted junk in the trunk.

"As soon as I can, I need to find out if this saw works, there's no need to haul it all over hell's creation if it's busted," I proclaimed, slamming the trunk closed.

"Yeah, we'll check it later, more eaters are heading our way, let's get out of here before I decide to stick around and fuck'um up," Derek insisted, as he climbed back into the car.

I again jumped behind the glassy looking white plastic steering wheel of our reconditioned automobile before commenting.

"You really do have a rhetorical way with words don't you?" I asked sarcastically.

"Indeed I do, whatever in the hell that means," Derek answered smiling.

Without further hesitation, I slammed the clutch pedal to the floor and crammed the three speed manual transmission into first gear, and then in a coordinated fashion between pushing on the accelerator and slowly engaging the clutch, I let up slowly on the far left pedal.

The beefy steel-bodied 1950's Chevrolet began to rumble up North I-65 toward Indianapolis, and we were on our way once more.

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BETH

Three days before Jack met Derek
...

A woman's voice softly broke through the late night silence as Beth's bunk was gently rocked.

"Beth, wake up, it's time to go," Jolene whispered, "Are you ready? We've got to go now before they change the guards."

"Yes, I'm ready," Beth answered, sitting up and reaching for her .22cal rifle. "I just wish I could kill that bastard Ron before we go."

"Well you can't, not if you want to get out of here alive," Jolene pointed out. "So, come on let's get the hell out of here."

The guards changed shifts at exactly midnight every night, and the four that were due to come on duty that night had not made a deal with Jolene, and would surely stop the two girls from escaping the Caucasian's fortress.

Jolene never told Beth what prompted her desire to leave the fortress, but she had been planning her escape from the compound for several months, and part of her escape plan was to bribe the guards on duty to look the other way while she and any companions that she might be able to recruit made their get-a-way.

There were four guards on each shift, and her plan was to leave before midnight so that she and her party would have all night to distance themselves from the camp, and anyone that might chose to come after them.

It was a very risky venture to try to leave the region controlled by the Caucasian. Even though he was not a stickler for details for some unknown reason, he was a sociopathic megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur, and he took great offense to anybody that tried to leave his self-proclaimed jurisdiction. Especially somebody that was not granted permission first, and very few were
ever
granted permission, first, last, or otherwise.

Nobody at the Caucasian's stronghold had much to bargain with; the nature of the socialistic structure pretty much brought everybody down to the same level. This equalization of the population ensured a black market type of mentality among certain individuals who were brave enough, or stupid enough, to buck the system and risk the punishment that would be inflicted on them if they were caught.

The result of such a system left most of the people with nothing that everyone else didn't have, and although the penalty for a person breaking the rules, or a guard that was found to be derelict in his or her duties was not set in stone, they could expect to be dealt with in a very harsh manner.

Fortunately, for Jolene and Beth the rotation of the guards had not changed for several weeks prior to their escape attempt, and all four guards that were scheduled to be on duty that evening were the men that she had bribed.

Jolene had used the only bribe that she had at her disposal that the male guards did not possess; in short, she had been sleeping with all four guards on a nightly basis for the previous three weeks before the escape attempt was to take place.

She had convinced the troop of paramilitary sentries that she would not rat them out if she and her group (Beth) were to be captured and brought back to the fortress, as long as she was the only female participating in the payment of the bribe.

This arrangement saved Beth and the other two women who eventually chickened out and turned down the offer to join the conspiracy to escape, from having to become women of ill repute, and have to live with the fact that they had
whored
their way out of captivity. A fact that didn't seem to bother Jolene.

Beth had grown tired of being used as a water-filled punching bag at the Sarge's discretion, which seemed to be becoming more prevalent as each day passed.

Most of the so-called men in the place acted as if they were afraid of Ron, so nobody intervened to stop the all too frequent public poundings.

When she made the mistake of taking the issue to the Caucasian, thinking that as the leader, he would be inclined to protect
all
of his subjects, and make the proper determination in her case, and then justice would be served. Or at the very least, the Sarge would be forced to stop beating on her.

He just laughed in her face and told the Sarge to try slapping her.

"It leaves less bruises," he said.

His advice also left Beth next in line for another public beating, which was administered moments after leaving the sight of the man in charge.

Beth knew that if she gutted the punk (the punk Sarge) within the compound, she would most likely be skinned alive (literally) and her dermis pelt would be fed to the zombies that always ghosted the perimeter of the building while waiting for human scraps to be tossed their way by the Caucasian's henchmen. All the while,
skinless,
she would be forced to watch as they devour it.

If there was one thing that the Caucasian prided himself on, it was equality between women and men. It didn't matter whether you were a man or a woman, he would have you skinned equally.

This procedure was commonplace within the confines of the Caucasian's fortress, although it was usually reserved for those who had made assassination attempts on the leader (which for some reason seemed commonplace also), although it was not unheard of for this punishment to be arbitrarily doled out by some of the meaner guards for any infraction of the Caucasian's laws.

Thus, the zombies walking the circumference of the compound property were dubbed
Skin-Eaters
.

So, totally fed up with the pain from being beat on almost every day, being called
Everlast
, and having to endure jokes about her having to be told twice about everything (because of her perpetual two black eyes), Beth decided to take her chances with Jolene
outside the wire
so to speak.

Even though she knew that being caught would most likely mean certain death, she felt that sooner or later the Sarge was going to go into one of his intoxicated rages and beat her to death anyway. Therefore, she decided that she would be the one that would choose the method of her own demise, and it wouldn't be at the hand of the man that she had grown to despise.

With Jolene's plan now in motion, the two determined women made their way out of the communal sleeping area where the second-class citizens were housed.

The Sarge had Beth moved into the communal quarters after her countless rejections of his drunken sexual advances. A move that he considered as punishment for her, and she considered as a welcome relief from him.

However, every morning, he would join her at breakfast, and begin her regiment of daily torment.

"The guard called Kenny said he would make sure that we made it out of here, as long as we got to his station before the changing of the guard," Jolene informed Beth.

"Then quit yapping and let's find Kenny," Beth whispered back, nudging her friend forward.

As the girls reached Kenny's post, they could hear the corporal of the relieving guards in the ready room, giving last minute orders to his patrolmen.

"Hurry up you bitch's, are you trying to get us all caught?" Kenny scolded in a low voice, as the two females approached. "Well at least you two brought your guns with you, you're going to need them out there."

"Shut the fuck up, and tell us which way to go, the other guards are right behind us," Beth scolded back.

"Go straight for that tall tree in the distance, that will take you into a residential neighborhood, and keep going from there and you'll be headed south into the countryside," Kenny directed them. "And watch out for zombies, they're kind of thick in that direction this time of night."

Beth and Jolene scurried out the door held open by the guard Kenny, who at the same time waved off the other guards that had been bribed (fucked), and ran as fast as they could toward the tall tree on the horizon that was barely visible in the dark.

As they ran, Beth fished out a small folding pocketknife with a four-inch blade from her pants pocket and unfurled it.