ZOMBIE'S DOOM? "Chronicles of Jack Doom" (39 page)

Again, my droll sense of humor seemed to soar well above the large albino's head as his long colorless face exhibited a curiously unknowing look.

I couldn't figure out how the Caucasian kept all of the people at this fortress under his spell. I hadn't seen any outstanding leadership skills up to this point, and the man didn't seem to be what you might call the sharpest knife in the utensil drawer either.

Nevertheless, I had other things to worry about. I needed to convince the tall freak that he would definitely see Derek and me again, even if he did consent to allow us to depart into the vast Indiana Badlands in search of the Sarge's girlfriend.

"I not sure what all the fuss is about, I ran into a couple of good ole boys back in Oklahoma that told me that they had seen the Sarge as they were leaving your fortress," I divulged. "It sounds to me like you let them leave without raising a ruckus."

"That I did Jack Doom, but they were a special case.

You see they did not just leave this fortress, I sent them out beyond the safety of these walls to recruit people like yourself to join my flock," the Caucasian admitted. "They seem to be accomplishing their mission, if I do say so myself?"

"Short of a few teeth, I guess they're doing a bang up job for you out there."

"Well I am sure that you can see my point, after all of the hard work that my traveling minions have done.

To allow you to go back out into that world of the undead, would not only be cruel to you, but it would also be very counterproductive for them, do you not think?" the large albino stated, using his usual odd way a speaking and his strange accent.

"My goal here is to find my friend and help him bring back his
concubine
, then join your band of soldiers, just like the Sarge did," I said, referring to Beth as the Sarge's concubine. "And if me and Derek don't come back, then that will just mean that we got killed somewhere out there in the wasteland, and it will save you the trouble of killing me last?

Besides, how can we be expected to maintain the fighting prowess that is the hallmark of your elite army, if you keep us sequestered here in the compound?"

"You are correct Jack Doom, when you enter the ring on fight night; I want you to be in prime condition to give your best performance. It would be a pity if I had to hang your head on the wire outside.

Especially, after only your first fight."

There was no way that I was going to climb into a ring and fight someone just to satisfy this clown's insatiable lust for blood. But if letting him think that, would get me and Derek the hell out of there, then so be it.

So somehow, between my twisted logic and my yarn spinning, and convincing the Caucasian that it was a matter of keeping a sharp fighting edge on our skills, I had pleaded my case in a way that made sense to the off balanced albino and he shared this with me.

"Ron is one of my favorite and trusted soldiers, because of that I will allow you both to help him in his quest to regain access to his blonde female and her runaway partner," the freak disclosed. "But if you are not killed and choose not to return with your friend and the two females, I will not hesitate to send Ron back out into the harshness that is the Badlands along with my best trackers, with orders to retrieve you both, and the result of that will not end well for either of you."

After he had told me that the Sarge was one of his favorites, I didn't have the heart to tell him that when I find my old friend, he would not be returning, with or without his
concubine
.

However, I figured that in this case the Caucasian was going to be a man of his word. And I had no intention of walking around the zombie filled Armageddon constantly looking over my shoulder (I mean anymore than I already had to walk around constantly looking over my shoulder), wondering when one of this tyrant's henchmen was going to stick a shiv in my back and bring back my severed head to hang on his bosses clothesline.

An even more of a nightmarish scenario could unfold if the albino offered a reward for my capture,
dead or alive
.

Then I'd have every two-bit piece of shit that could pull a trigger out looking to cash in on my dead carcass, and I couldn't let that happen.

The Caucasian had to be dealt with, and I chose to deal with him immediately.

"Then we have a deal," I said, maneuvering closer to the freak show as if to shake his abnormally large hand. "My buddy and I will set out first thing in the morning to find the Sarge and his blonde concubine."

My true intentions were not to shake the hand of the alleged cult leader that had promised to kill me, but to get close enough to his guards to appropriate one of their weapons.

I stepped toward the imposing seated figure with my hand out as a gesture of good faith. My humble approach and kind demeanor caught the palace sentry on the Caucasian's right side off guard.

With my hand slightly cupped, I swung my out stretched arm up to the left side of the man's head and slammed my hand against his ear.

My concave palm pushed an over abundant amount of air into his ear canal and instantly broke the guard's eardrum.

The man screamed in pain while lifting both hands to his head and covering his ears as I grabbed his rifle and forcefully lifted it straight up.

A crunching sound was heard as the heavy metal weapon slammed into the man's chin and forced his jaw along with his lower row of teeth up into his upper row of teeth, fracturing several of his pearly whites and knocking him out cold.

As the palace incompetent dropped to the floor unconscious, I reached for his machete with my left hand and pulled it out of its scabbard on his way down, still maintaining a firm grip on his rifle with my right hand.

By now, Derek was aware that the shit was hitting hard against the fan, and was about to be splattered all over the room, so he decided to join in the fray.

The second guard was also seeing that the situation was going sideways and pointed his rifle toward me.

However, the Caucasian had decided to create some distance between himself and the transpiring fight, by trying to move forward and out of the line of fire of his sentry's gun, which put him directly in the line of fire of the guard on his left, and inadvertently shielded me from his aim.

As I pulled on the black gun the unconscious guard had pulled to the floor as he fell, Derek had decided to tackle the sentry busy trying to get a shot off at me.

While the conscious guard franticly tried to maneuver himself and his rifle into a position to get a clean shot at me without shooting either the guard lying on the floor or his oversized boss, he failed to see Derek about to pummel him.

Unable to pull the downed guard's gun from him due to the sling being wrapped around his shoulders, I let go of the gun and turned my attention toward the Caucasian.

He now stood there almost paralyzed, watching in awe, as Derek beat the living shit out of the second so-called elite palace guard who was still more intent on getting a clean sight picture of me, than stopping Derek's fists from batter his now bloody face.

The grunts and groans that Derek made while he systematically walloped the snot out of the guard seemed to mesmerize the huge albino.

Maybe it was the speed in which the punches were being applied to the man's face, or the profuse bleeding that was the result of those punches.

Who knows?

But whatever the reason for the Caucasian's failure to take action in the midst of that palace coup would serve to be his downfall.

"Cauc!" I yelled, breaking the self-induced trance he had put himself in. "Over here!"

Before the tall pale man had a chance to turn around or even look in my direction, I swung the confiscated machete horizontally at my hip level, which just happened to be right at the kneecap level of the Caucasian.

The amateurish guard that was the first to fall, although totally out of his depth as a guard, was worthy when it came to sharpening edged weapons.

He had honed the blade of his machete to a razor sharp edge, and as I swiped the blade across the knees of my advisory, the flat cutting edge of the long steel blade hacked through the flesh, muscle, tendons, and cartilage in and around the sociopathic megalomaniac's left knee like it was made of warm butter, stopping only when it had cleanly sliced through the last remaining skin on the leg.

The giant albino let out a horrendous guttural scream as I jerked the blade from between the two leg halves, and he fell back toward his chair.

Fearing that other guards would hear their leader's howls, I jumped on the fallen giant and with all the power that I could muster, I swung the machete down vertically onto the top of his head.

The blow was so forceful that it shattered the brittle human skullcap that the man wore so proudly, and plowed the machete deep into the forward portion of his own skull, effectively performing a frontal lobotomy, and ending the tyrannical reign of the dreaded self-imposed ruler of the Indiana Badlands.

Meanwhile, Derek was still beating on the body of the guard that he had bludgeoned to death with his fists.

"Derek, enough is too much! I said. "That sucker is going to wake up and bite your face off."

"Right," he agreed.

"Just stick him in the brain and let's get out of here before more of this punk's guards show up," I warned, pulling the machete out of the Caucasian's head and planting it firmly in the still unconscious sentry's skull.

No guards came rushing to their leader's aid, it seems that they were all accustom to hearing their master groan and howl during what he referred to as his entertainment.

So as the albino freak show moaned and groaned in the agony of defeat, his minions ignored his yowling thinking that it was just another day in the life of their illustrious leader, and reveled in the fact that it wasn't they that were providing that days entertainment.

With the monster in charge taken care of, and no alarm being sounded, Derek and I hatched a quick off the cuff plan to make our escape from the dead Caucasian's compound.

First, we relieved the two dead guards of their dreaded black rifles, and Derek wiped the blood off his hands on the dead giant's robe.

Then we left the Caucasian's throne room as if nothing had happened, hoping that none of the guards in the outer area would check on the well being of their overbearing leader until we were well away from the compound.

The new blood splatter on our clothing matched the old blood splatter that we had brought in with us from outside, and no one noticed the few extra spots, so no one was the wiser.

The first sentry that we met in the hallway was gullible enough to fall for the line of bullshit that we spoon fed him. After all, he was dumb enough to believe that the Caucasian was some sort of demigod or some horseshit like that, so it wasn't too much of a surprise that he would believe that his boss would
loan
us the fine rifles we were carrying.

After we told him that we had been assigned to go outside and help the Sarge look for his concubine, he even led us to where they had stored our own weapons and allowed us to gear up.

We couldn't wait for the sun to rise the following morning to begin our trek back out into the Badlands, as we didn't know how long it would be until the bodies of the giant albino and his two guards would be discovered, and we certainly didn't want to be anywhere near the place when they were found.

"We need to leave now!" I told the guard at the door.

"You're going outside while it's still dark?" he asked. "That's kind of curious."

"Cauc wants us out there immediately to help Ron find his woman," I insisted, hoping that shortening the name of the leader would cause the guard to infer that there was some kind of favoritism going on. "But if you want to countermand Cauc's orders, that's fine with me. I don't mind going for a swim while we wait for sunrise, even though the water probably is somewhat of an emerald green in color."

The guard's face turned almost as white as the man he was so dedicated to, and he quickly responded.

"No, not at all! I just meant that there's a standing order that states that if anyone leaves the fort at night they have to go in a group."

"That's fine, were leaving now, who's going with us?" I asked, walking toward the front door.

At this point Derek threw in a nice touch by seemingly taking charge of the situation.

"You two, come with us!" he ordered, pointing at two men sitting at a table near the door playing cards. "Here, take these guns your boss gave us and let's go, you can shirk your duties later."

Falling hook, line, and sinker for our ruse, and fearing that we might tell their boss that they were goofing off while on duty, the two men quickly joined us, and departed the premises immediately, carrying the two black rifles we had taken from the guards we had just killed.

My only regret upon leaving the fortress in the middle of the Indiana Badlands was that I didn't get the chance to take advantage of what could have been the Caucasian's gracious yet unexpected hospitality before the day's perilous trek, by utilizing the schools swimming pool that I previously mentioned. Even though the water probably was somewhat of an emerald green in color.