The Regulators - 02 (19 page)

“Jax, I just heard it.”

“You heard what?”

“I just heard a thump.”

I was scanning the windows, but I couldn’t see anything
since the shutters were all closed. Jaxon walked back to the house, and he too
began to scan the windows, but he was much closer as he attempted to find an
angle in which he could actually see inside.

“I can’t see anything,” Jax said.

“What do you want to do?” I asked. “Kingsley could be in
there.”

“How do you figure that?”

“The scene in the desert was just a diversion,” I answered.
“What if she actually trapped him inside this house somehow? You said yourself
that what we saw in the desert didn’t make sense.”

“That’s a pretty big stretch; I dunno.”

“We owe it to him to at least check out the house,” I said.

Jaxon nodded his head and the two of us walked over to the
front door. Merrick began making weird little growls from the yard, but she
came with us. I put my hand on the doorknob and gave it a turn. The door wasn’t
locked, but it did vibrate a little, which I thought was sort of weird. I
pushed it open, but after about five inches the door bumped into something soft
and would move no farther. I pushed and I felt some give, but then the door
pushed back, and the zombie screams started.

It was a trap. Again.

I vaguely remember hearing Jaxon begin to scream orders at
me. I think he was telling me to close the door, but his voice was drowned out
by all the zombie screams. It sounded like there were a lot of them in there,
and they sounded very hungry.

I was trying to pull the door closed when I saw all the
decaying hands grab through the space I had created and begin to pull against
me. It was a tug-of-war. I was trying to close the door and they were trying to
open it.

Jaxon was still screaming at me and I couldn’t figure out
why he wasn’t helping me close the door. When I heard the muffled thumps of his
mp7 from behind me, I wanted to turn around and see just what the hell he was
shooting at, but I couldn’t. I was afraid to divide my attention.

Suddenly I felt Merrick’s teeth around my ankle, and it hurt
like a son of a bitch. The shock of being bitten by Jaxon’s dog distracted me
from the door, and I felt it being yanked from my hands.

The house was indeed jam packed with shamblers.

“
Why weren’t you able
to hear them before
?”

If we had come by during the evening, we probably would
have. As it was, they were probably in that lazy state they tend to get into
when the sun is out and nothing is capturing their attention.

They all surged for the door and that’s the reason I’m still
alive. They all surged towards the door at the same time. They got in each
other’s way. I backtracked immediately. I didn’t even bother turning around; I
just went as fast as I could in reverse.

I almost collided with Jax.

I turned to grab him and that’s when I realized the street
had become filled with zombies. That’s why Merrick grabbed my ankle by the way.
It wasn’t a bite. She was trying to lead me away. I froze at the sight of all the
zombies, but Jaxon kept firing. I remember being completely impressed by how
calm and cool he seemed to be as he fired off shot after shot. I remember
thinking that if I had a gun I could probably help him out. Then I recalled I
did have a gun. I also possessed an mp7, and it was currently hanging uselessly
off the sling around my neck.

I grabbed the gun; oh wait, I’m sorry, it’s actually a
rifle. I brought the rifle to my shoulder, and began to bring them down one at
a time.

“To your right,” Jaxon snarled.

I had forgotten about the zombies still in the house. They
were flooding out of the open door, right towards us. I swung the barrel in
that direction and began to fire upon them. As soon as I had nailed all the
shamblers outside the door, things became a little bit easier for me. The
instant I saw them appear in the doorway, I brought them down. The bodies began
to pile up around the door and that slowed them down even more.

I had to pause to reload. While doing that, I took a look
over towards Jax. He was in trouble. Hell, we were both in trouble. There were
zombies everywhere. They were literally just pouring out of the nearby homes.
He was doing his best to hold them back, but it was obvious that we were going
to be overwhelmed.

“Let’s make a run for it!” I shouted to be heard over the
screams and moans.

“I’m right behind you,” Jaxon yelled back.

I took off as fast as I could move. I wasn’t going to win
many races, but it was hopefully fast enough to stay ahead of the zombies. I
heard Jaxon screaming something from behind me, but I couldn’t make out what it
was.

Suddenly, Jaxon was right beside me, and then he was in
front of me, reaching back to grab a hold of my arm and drag me along at an
even faster rate. I couldn’t take it for long. I managed to round the corner of
the road and get about another block or two before my breathing became loud
enough to block out the sounds of our pursuers.

Jaxon was shouting at me to hurry up. It felt like he was
going to yank my arm out of the socket, he was running so fast. I could hear
them behind us. It was terrifying. I pushed and pushed myself, but my legs felt
rubbery and weak. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had gone running.

I felt the pull on my arm rapidly change direction. I looked
up and realized that Jaxon was cutting through a yard. We ran to a backyard
gate and fortunately for me, Jaxon didn’t jump over it. He took the time to
lift the latch, let me in and close the gate behind us.

Then he was breaking down the rear door of the house and
shoving me through. After he closed it behind me, I was left alone and gasping
in the shadows of an empty house. I stumbled to a window just in time to see
all of the shamblers flood into the backyard.

It took me a moment to locate Jaxon. He was waiting for them
on the edge of the rock wall farthest from the house. The zombies spotted him
immediately and charged towards him. He waited until the last possible second
and jumped the ten or twenty feet to the neighboring yard behind the house I
was hiding in.

Jaxon was gone.

I was all alone in an extremely hostile environment.
Something scraped against my leg and I almost screamed. It was only Merrick.
She was pawing at me for attention. Jaxon had pushed her into the house as
well.

The backyard was filled with zombies. Some of them were
dropping off the wall in an effort to continue the chase, while others were
just wandering around aimlessly.

Jaxon was gone.

I tapped my earpiece.

“Jaxon,” I whispered. “Where are you?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” Jaxon said with a little laugh.

“What do I do?” I asked.

“Just wait there,” Jaxon said. “After I lose them, I’ll be
back to get you.”

He clicked off after that. I tried to ask a few more
questions, but he continued to ignore me. I sat on the floor of the kitchen for
around thirty minutes. It actually took that long before I was breathing
normally.

I drank some water out of my backpack. I wiped the cold
sweat from my forehead and finally got to my feet. My legs were still shaky. It
wasn’t a good feeling at all.

I heard a noise from somewhere in the house.

I was afraid to use my mp7. Even though it has a silencer,
it still makes a muffled thump. I didn’t want any of the zombies outside the
house to hear it so I pulled out my large bowie knife. Jaxon insisted that all
of us carry some sort of non-firing backup weapon. I chose the bowie knife just
because it looked mean as hell. It was a Cold Steel knife so Jaxon had actually
approved of my choice since he believes they are probably the best fighting
knives available.

I had to laugh at this.
Jaxon was definitely the man to seek approval from when it came to edged
weapons. He might even be considered a bit of a knife snob, but then again, he
needed the best. His life often depended on his weapons
.

I crept into the next room as quietly as I could. I was once
again breathing heavily, and the noise made me worry. Jaxon began jabbering in
my ear, but he wasn’t talking to me. He was asking Hardin to send a chopper
over his location. The radio chatter made me nervous as well. It seemed to be
way too loud. I tried to find the volume on my ear, but I couldn’t so I ended
up shutting the earpiece off.

I was terrified. That may come as a shock to you, but I
didn’t exactly have a lot of experience in those sorts of situations. When
everything went down before, I was in the safe zone right up until we left the
area.

“
Weren’t you the one
that went out to help Jaxon during those fifteen minutes of footage
?”

Yeah, that was me, but that doesn’t really count. Things
just happened, and I just sort of reacted. Besides, Jaxon had already done all
the hard stuff. I just kinda helped bring things to a finish.

“
Later on you went
with them to rescue Skie, correct
?”

And my involvement in that little operation consisted of
sniping out targets while I was safe and sound on a rooftop. To be honest, I
think Jaxon knew I was pretty worried. It’s hard to say with him. He often
takes care of people without really telling them that he’s taking care of them.

There was nothing in the next room, just a darkened living
room. There was a sofa, a nice TV, a recliner but nothing out of the ordinary.
I was hoping that I was hearing things. I was hoping that the house was empty.
I was hoping for a lot of things actually.

I heard the noise again.

I followed the sound. It sounded like someone rattling a
doorknob. I went down a darkened hallway. I wanted to use my flashlight, but I
was afraid that it could somehow be seen from outside and the area around the
house was infested with shamblers.

At the end of the hallway was a sturdy wooden door. I didn’t
want to open it. I really, really did not want to open that door. Under normal
circumstances, I wouldn’t have turned that knob for all the tequila in Mexico,
but if there was a zombie in the house with me, it would be better if I took it
out quickly. If I tried to ignore the problem and it got out of the room and
found me, I might not be able to kill it before it let out a scream. A scream
would be fatal to me. There were just too many of them outside.

I turned the knob and opened the door.

It was a suicide. Dudley was correct in saying that those
are often the worst things to come upon. It was a middle aged woman that had
hanged herself. On a side note, I said hanged. I did not say hung, because that
would be incorrect. Way too many people would make the mistake of telling you
that the woman hung herself. When, in fact, the woman had hanged herself from
some pull up bars that were attached above the door frame of the bathroom. It
was a sad sight to see.

My guess is that she chose to end her life after she had
been bitten. She probably didn’t realize that she would come back as a zombie.
She should have destroyed her brain. Anyway, it was her twitching foot that
made the noise as it occasionally bumped against the doorknob of the open
bathroom door.

I began to relax somewhat when I realized I wasn’t in any
immediate danger. Unfortunately, my eyes drifted to the bed. There was
something under the covers. I needed to make sure whatever it was wasn’t going
to jump up and try to eat me so Merrick and I entered the room and quietly
closed the door behind us. Then, I pulled back the covers with the point of my
knife.

I looked into the rotting face of a middle aged man. There
was a bite mark on his shoulder. The woman hanging was probably his wife. She
had probably committed suicide after killing her husband. The man had a bullet
hole in his temple. It’s a shame that she didn’t kill him before he had taken a
bite out of her. Then it would have been a situation of rescuing her instead of
putting her out of her misery.

I approached the twitching body. She couldn’t scream, the
rope didn’t allow enough air for that. Yet, she became visibly excited as I
approached her. Those rotting hands of hers began to reach out for me. I felt
them graze against the top of my helmet.

I didn’t know how to put her down. The ceiling was unusually
high and I wasn’t anywhere near tall enough for a head shot with my knife.
Fortunately, the chair she probably used to hang herself was nearby.

I wheeled the chair in front of the poor woman and climbed
on top of it. I was now level with her head. I wanted to put her down with one
swing, so I waited until she pivoted at just the right angle and I pulled back
for a swing.

She grabbed a hold of the strap on my helmet.

I freaked out completely and the wheeled chair went flying
out from under me. It’s a very natural instinct to reach out when you’re
falling down. Unfortunately for me, my natural instinct led me to reach out and
grab onto the rope by which the woman had hanged herself with.

Her head was cranked back at just the right angle, so her
biting me wasn’t a problem. No, that wasn’t my worry at all. My worry came from
the razor sharp knife that was still in my hand: the very same hand that had
instinctually grabbed the rope around her neck as I fell. There’s something to
be said for Cold Steel knives. They are sharp as hell, and, believe it or not,
my knife cut through the rope, and both of us landed on the floor in a heap.

Unfortunately for me, the woman landed on top of me. At that
point I realized that her neck was no longer craned backwards. She was free to
bite me.

I struggled. She struggled. Her jaws came towards my face
with a ferocious snap. I barely saved my nose from being removed. I had my free
gloved hand on her neck, but the hand that held the knife was trapped between
us. Her breath was horrible. I was gagging as I struggled against her.