George Washington Zombie Slayer (10 page)

Chapter 24

George Washington: Ninja

The large, lonely covered wagon moved slowly by torchlight along the winding road in the darkness of the tree-shrouded Virginia hillside. The uniformed British soldier driving the wagon was sullen, unnerved by the cargo of 24 zombies which were shackled securely behind him, or so he hoped. He was also upset by the fact several of these new zombie soldiers were once living soldiers in his own regiment, men he once knew, condemned for dereliction of duty and then executed, only to be reborn as these vile creatures.

As the wagon passed a slight dip
in the road beside a large, overhanging tree branch, a single sword-blade gently descended from the leafy shroud and made contact with the canvas top of the covered wagon, piercing the surface in silence. And as the wagon rolled forward, the blade slid all the way across the top of the wagon, and its canvas hood was cut in two, bisected by its own forward motion.

Once
it passed the tree, the canvas covering of the wagon dropped away and two black-clad ninja dropped into the midst of the chained zombies in the back of the formerly-covered wagon. One of the black-clad men stood and did nothing. The other drew his sword and swung it expertly at the chained creatures, immediately decapitating twenty three of them in mere seconds.  The last remaining zombie, its throat only nicked by the blade, began to gurgle and choke, causing the driver to turn around, just as George Washington removed that zombie’s head with a smooth, second stroke.

“Hey there!”
said the British officer, turning from the driver’s bench and cocking a small pistol. As he took aim, Washington swung his sword in an impossibly swift arc and cut the pistol in two just as the soldier pulled the trigger. There was a large flash of smoke and flame as the pistol exploded in the British officer’s hand. Spinning the man about with his free hand, George Washington gave the startled British officer a swift kick in the ass, which ejected the poor lad from the wagon where he landed face first and unconscious in the dirt of the road.

“You missed that one zombie,” Jefferson said, stand
ing there in the back of the rolling, driverless wagon. Jefferson stepped onto the front of the wagon and pulled the reigns hard, drawing the wagon to a stop.

The scene was almost surreal. Thomas Jefferson and George
Washington, in their black ninja uniforms, stood upon a wagon of twenty four headless zombie torsos, with the back of the wagon now filling with blood, and a trail of zombie heads littering the road behind them.

“Well I got twenty three out of twenty four
zombies before the driver turned around,” Washington boasted. “And I got the last one on the second try. I’d say that’s pretty good. And I noticed YOU were a big help,” Washington added sarcastically.

“I am here only
to observe.” Jefferson stated. “Not to fight. And the driver nearly shot you! Your sword shattered the gun just as he pulled the trigger.”

“
Before
he pulled the trigger,” Washington corrected.

“
It was too close, in any case,” Jefferson added. “You were nearly shot. You will need to do better.”

“Yes, S
ensei,” Washington replied. The two men stepped off of the wagon and inspected the corpses as blood now poured from the cracks in the wagon’s wooden floorboards, pooling in the road below. “Twenty four less zombies in the American Colonies,” Washington stated. “A fine night’s work. But what do we do with the wagon?”

From the top of the hill where they
stood with the wagonload of headless ex-zombies, the two men could see the flickering lights of the British zombie training encampment in the distance below, down the road which led to the bottom of the hill.

“I think maybe we should send General Cornwallis a message
or two,” Jefferson suggested as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small vial of whale oil, which he sprinkled liberally over the zombie corpses in the back of the wagon. He then unhitched the two horses from the wagon and handed the reins of one horse to Washington, while he tied the other to the back of his own horse’s saddle, which stood waiting behind a roadside shrub.

“We’ll take these two horses as compensation for expenses related to the fight against British zombie incursions in the American Colonies,” Jefferson said.

Thomas Jefferson reached into the concealed pocket of his black ninja outfit again and pulled out a single match, which he struck with his thumbnail and ignited it. Touching it to the back of the wagon, the zombie carcasses burst into flame, a luminous bonfire of the undead atop the rear of the wagon.

“Help me give it a push,” Jefferson said, pressing his hands to the rear of the wagon and moving it towards the downward incline of the hill. When Washington joined in, the s
trength of the two men rolled the wagon up and over the crest where it slowly began to roll on its own down the road towards the bottom of the hill. They could hear sentry bugles blowing the alert in the British encampment below, undoubtedly in observation of the huge, flaming wagon which now began its steady acceleration down the hillside.

Pushing a horseless, driverless, flaming wagon
filled with zombie carcasses down the hillside towards General Cornwallis was an act that was designed more for show than for actual attack or damage. At best, Jefferson and Washington had hoped that the wagon might actually make it to the bottom of the hill before overturning and crashing and tumbling into flames. But what actually happened was far more dramatic.

The flaming wagon, perhaps following in the tracks of other
wagons that had preceded it, or perhaps guided by the unseen hand of a providential God that supported the fight for American freedom, travelled as if piloted down the road and accelerated towards the British encampment. The wagon raced along as a blazing, flaming comet, perfectly navigating the sharp turn at the bottom of the hill, which sent it speeding directly through the front gate of the British encampment.

Several of the frightened
British sentries, thinking the flaming conveyance must have a driver, fired useless musket shots in an effort to slow it down. The wagon, now entirely engulfed in flame, veered sharply to the right and headed directly for one of the barracks holding several hundred imprisoned zombies.

The wagon struck a hard blow along the corner of the first barracks, ejecting the flaming corpses of seven or eight zombies and smashing them into
the roof and sides of the wooden building, starting it on fire. Still careening onward and left after glancing off the first building, the wagon then ran over one poor, hapless sentry, smashed through and destroyed the officers’ privy, and finally slammed to a stop by exploding against the headquarters of General Cornwallis himself!

From the top of the hill
where they watched the fiery spectacle, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson laughed like a couple of schoolboys. They would have laughed even harder if they had seen Cornwallis himself running from the flaming bedroom of his headquarters, clad only in his silk Scooby-Doo jammies and matching slippers.

The headquarters of Cornwallis was fu
lly engulfed in flame in under three minutes, as was the zombie-filled barracks beside it. The zombies inside the barracks, two hundred and fifty six creatures, were mainly chained immobile inside and were helpless to avoid the flames. All they could to was to stand helpless, grunting and growling while being incinerated into ashes. The few flaming zombie stragglers that managed to emerge from the inferno wandered about the camp, sightless, with melted eyes before the British sentries shot them.

“I would say that was far more effective than we could have hoped for,” Washington said, wiping a tear from laughter from his cheek. “Oh, that was fucking PRICELESS!”

“I am both shocked and awed,” Jefferson said, coining the phrase for all time.  “I think we have only one more task before us,” Jefferson said as he picked up one of the zombie heads and handed it to Washington. “I think we will send a few
personal messages
to General Cornwallis.”

Chapter 25

Messages for General Cornwallis

Charles Lord Cornwallis was shaken as
he was stirred from his peaceful slumber by the thundering crash of the flaming wagon through the front door of his headquarters.  After making a tactical withdrawl from the burning building in his jammies, he now sat at a small desk in the visitors’ quarters, sipping a small cup of tea, as various British sentries and soldiers worked to extinguish the flames of the two burning buildings.

“The flames have been extinguished, General,” said Lieutenant Smithers after knocking and entering the room
with a large sack about an hour after the attack. Cornwallis glanced out the window at the pile of ash that was once a barracks holding hundreds of zombies. The building had been entirely burned away, although the corpses of many of the zombies lay in the ash, twisted and charred by the flames, some not quite dead.

The British sentries strode carefully through the ruins of the barracks, finding the occasional “surviving” zombie torso and stabbing it in the head with a merciful bayonet thrust
.

“Barracks number three was a total loss
with all zombies terminated,” Smithers continued. “And three living British soldiers were killed as well.”

Cornwallis showed no emotion and
only stared intently out his window while sipping his tea and contemplating the recent attack.

“We found these
zombie heads stacked at the top of the hill,” Smithers continued, setting the large sack on the floor. “We believe they were the zombies from tonight’s patrol that were due back last hour.” Smithers reached into the sack and pulled out a neatly severed zombie head, with a small piece of rolled parchment in its mouth. He reached into the lifeless mouth and removed the paper, handing it to Cornwallis, who unrolled it across his desk.

The words “
BRITISH GO HOME!”
were written in dark black ink across the parchment. The general could feel his blood pressure rising, and his face reddening in anger.

“All of the heads have a piece of parchment in their mouths,” Smithers explained, removing another head and handing Cornwallis the parchment from its mouth.

“CORNWALLIS IS A FUCKING PUSSY!”
was written boldly across the second parchment, which Cornwallis read with rising fury. Cornwallis began to breathe heavily and to show a most ungentlemanly perspiration as he read more of the messages scrawled on the scrolls. Each message showed a disrespect and vulgarity to which Cornwallis was unaccustomed. He laid out all of the scrolls upon his table and read the inscriptions on each carefully.

“SCREW THE KING!”

“RED COATS ARE FOR FAIRY-BOYS”

“CORNWAL
LIS’ NUTSACK SMELLS LIKE TACOS”

“BRITISH OFFICERS EAT HORSE DUNG”

“
GENERAL CORNWALLIS IS A SHITBURGER”

Cornwallis continued to read the messages until he was red-faced and shamed. But there was little he could do at the moment but sip his tea angrily and contemplate his future plans against the colonial riff-raff that now mocked him openly.

“TACOS
!” Cornwallis exclaimed. “This is slanderous, to say that my nutsack smells like tacos! And I’m sure they mean the hot and spicy ones and not just normal tacos!”

“Yes, Sir,” Smithers answered empathetically.

“And they called me a shitburger!” Cornwallis huffed. “A shitburger!”

“Yes, Sir,” Smithers replied.

“These colonials are rude and ungentlemanly,” Cornwallis said to Smithers after reading all of the scrolls.  “Ignorant, sheep-humping farm trash.”
              “Yes, Sir,” Smithers agreed.

“I want patrols doubled,” Cornwallis ordered. “And I want the production of zombie soldiers increased by twenty percent.”

“Yes, Sir,” Smithers replied as he left the room to implement the orders.

“These colonials want to play games, do they?” Cornwallis said to himself. “Well I can play games also,” Cornwallis said. “
And I believe that these rebellious colonial assholes will soon learn that they have fucked with the wrong shitburger!”

Chapter 26

Jefferson Departs for Monticello

The morning following the wagon attack found Thomas Jefferson up at dawn, just outside of the Mount Vernon stables, saddling his
new horse, which he had named Trigger.

“
Where are you off to, my friend?” Washington asked as he approached, before noticing that Jefferson’s horse was loaded with saddlebags and furniture for a long journey.