Jango's Anthem: Zombie Fighter Jango #2 (11 page)

Vanessa, on the other
hand, had heard him, and she knew that it was no small thing for someone like Jango to say. She felt hot tears in her eyes as Jango urgently pushed her and told her, “Run, run god dammit, and don't you look back.”

Vanessa ran,
and she hated herself with every step. Nevertheless, she knew that if she refused, she would turn Jango's sacrifice into a punch line. Vanessa would be damned if her brother, her brother by choice, would be anybody's punch line. So she ran, and as she passed the other running women and girls, she told them, “Follow me!”

Vanessa did not look back.

Jango watched as Vanessa and the other escapees made a beeline for the dark outline of the Anthem mall. When he saw that they would be amongst the cars at the mall in a few seconds, he began to run.

Jango's legs
were a pounding blur as he sprinted faster than any Olympian ever had. He still gripped his shotgun in his left hand and his deadly ironwood stick in his right. As he ran, the two weapons whistled through the air as his arms pumped like the pistons on a train.

He
took a straight-line path back to the bowling alley, and the tractor-trailer with its payload of bowling balls. Now that he was no longer worried about stealth, it took less than two minutes to cover the half-mile to the bowling alley.

Swiftly, he
made his way to the truck that was attached to the trailer full of bowling balls. He ran around to the driver’s side door, and noted that it was open. He quietly opened it the rest of the way and peeked inside. There was no movement, but he saw a smear that looked like blood spattered on the inside of the windshield. He quickly climbed into the cab and was relieved to see the key in the ignition.

Jango
felt grateful that zombies didn't care about taking keys from the ignitions of vehicles. He was also grateful that zombies were not interested in stealing vehicles. He laughed as he visualized a moaning, wailing zombie trying to steal a car.

Jango turned the key and the truck roared to life.
Looking around the small cab, he noticed that the gearshift was for an automatic transmission. “Oh, yeah, baby, that’s even better!”

He
had been prepared to just use first or second gear and grind the transmission. He would burn the engine up to get the speed that he needed. However, thanks to automatic transmissions, he would not need to worry.

Jango put the truck into gear, and gunned the massive engine. The vehicle lurched forward, and quickly began to gather speed as
he aimed the truck toward the entrance of the housing development that he had just left.

Jango fumbled around until he
had found the switch that turned on the headlights. He switched them to the brightest setting and then pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor. The truck rocked and bounced as he left the parking lot and hit the large, desert lot. The truck bounced one more time, and then rode smoothly once he was on the road that led to his enemies.

Just as Jango had wrestled the truck onto the road, several vehicles
had poured out of the entrance to the housing community. When the men had seen the huge truck coming straight at them, all of the vehicles had screeched to a stop and they began climbing out of the cars.

There looked to be
more than fifty men, and all of them bristled with guns. Jango saw them raise their guns, and he saw the fiery dots of muzzle flashes as the men began shooting at him. He ducked down behind the dashboard as bullets stitched their way across the windshield.

Jango peeked over the dashboard, saw that he was
two or three-hundred feet away from the large group of armed men, and decided that it was time to put his plan into action. He did not hesitate; action followed thought as fast as thunder followed lightning.

He
wrenched the steering wheel hard to the left, which sent the truck and the trailer into a sharp sideways turn. In a flash, Jango grabbed his shotgun and stick, opened his door, and leapt from the moving vehicle. His powerful legs thrust him far from the vehicle as he jumped.

The truck was
now side-on to the men, and moving at over fifty miles an hour. The vehicle had turned, which made the sidewalls of the tires on the trailer stutter on the concrete of the road. When the tires caught on the concrete, the trailer jumped high into the air, and then came crashing back down onto the road.

When the massive trailer slammed into the road on its side
, the top of the trailer burst open and thousands of heavy bowling balls hurtled toward the men. The results were gruesome.

The bowling balls burst from the truck like several thousand cannons firing their payload
s all at once. The bowling balls slammed into the vehicles that the men had been driving, and slammed into the men themselves. The heavy orbs crushed bone, tore flesh, and decimated the ranks of Jango’s enemies.

The majority of the bowling balls
missed the men, and turned the brick wall in the immediate area into a jumble of broken masonry.

Eight or nine of the men had managed to avoid any injury by being behind the bulk of
their vehicles. They all began to fire their weapons at the truck that Jango had just vacated.

When
he had leapt from the moving vehicle, he wasn't sure if he would live or die when his body hit the ground. Honestly, he didn't really care. Just as long as he had accomplished his goal, and his sister and her group of refugees made it out alive, he could die with grace.

Just before Jango
struck the ground, he had loosened his entire body, and curled himself into an airborne fetal position. When he felt that the ground was close, he tucked his head as close to his knees as he could and spun into a series of flailing somersaults when he hit. He felt skin being torn from the back of his head, his elbows, and forearms, but the pain was muted. Although he lost his grip on the shotgun, he retained his stick. When he finally came to a stop, he was still alive.

Jango
made a quick and silent mental inventory of his various injuries. He noted what felt like torn muscles, broken ribs, and various contusions. He was pleased to note that his duct tape bandage had held up against the high-speed tumble.

Slowly
levering himself to a standing position, he swayed in place as he tried to remember what he was doing. He heard the sounds of gunfire and said, “Oh yeah, ha, now I remember.” With those words, he turned toward the wrecked hulk of the tractor-trailer rig, and made his slow limping way back to the field of battle.

Jango
knew that if he gave the men a chance to regroup, they would kill him and chase down Vanessa and all the other women as well. His eyes searched the ground for his shotgun as the sky in the east began to show the rosy shades of pink, purple, and red that heralded sunrise.

When he
spotted his shotgun, he saw that the barrel was irreparably bent. He reached his left hand behind him and felt the mangled butt stocks of the two double-barreled shotguns that he had tucked into his belt. He pulled one loose, and saw that the barrels and the triggers looked intact. He tucked the shotgun under his right arm and reached around with his left hand to pull out the other shotgun. When he saw that the second shotgun was still usable as well, he smiled.

He
tucked his stick into his belt at the front of his pants, and took a double-barreled shotgun in each of his scarred fists. He limped toward his enemies with the inevitability of a force of nature.

Jango angled himself so that
when he rounded on his enemies, he would come from the far end of the wrecked trailer. When he walked around the end of the trailer, he saw that the men had concentrated most of their firepower on the cab of the truck, just as he had expected.

He decided
that a bold attack was the only way that he had a chance of evening the odds. Jango moved toward the men at a hobbling run, his stick tucked in his belt, and his shotguns pointed at his foes. When he was about fifty feet away, he cocked each barrel, and fired all four barrels at once.

The swarm of lead that Jango sent toward his enemies shredded the flesh of three of the men. All three men fell, two of them
were dead, and one writhed and screamed in mortal agony as his life spilled out onto the pavement beneath him. The other eight men turned their weapons toward Jango, and began firing at him.

Jango
tossed his shotguns, and then dropped to his stomach as he drew his pistol. He shot at the men, even as they fired back at him. Jango felt splinters of the pavement sting his flesh as bullets buzzed and whined all around him. He felt bullets graze his flesh and tug at his clothing, but the pain meant nothing; all he desired was to deal death until he had breathed his last breath.

To Jango, these men were even worse than the zombies. Zombies were mindless automatons that just wanted a mouthful of flesh. But these men, they made the choice of evil. They had made a conscious decision to perpetrate evil acts on the world around them. They, too, had the insatiable appetite that was a defining point of zombies. These men mindfully, though, rather than mindlessly, consumed the flesh of those who they were able to prey on.

To Jango, th
at was an unforgivable sin. He felt that it went far beyond any dictionary definition of cowardice, and he believed that anyone who chose to target those who were weaker than they were nothing more than twists; and twists deserved no mercy.

Three more men fell beneath fusillade of lead th
at Jango sent their way, but he was overmatched in numbers as well as firepower. The men, seeing their advantage, began to press forward as Jango dropped an empty magazine from the grip of his pistol and seated a full magazine. He saw that his end was near, and he smiled.

Jango
let the slide slam forward to chamber a round, and he readied himself to die with a madman's grace.

He
pressed his weight up with his left hand, and felt a bullet burn the length of his back. Jango made it to his feet, and raised his pistol.

T
hen, out of nowhere, he heard a honking sound coming from the other side of the wrecked truck. He watched the men turn away from him to look at whatever had made the noise.

Jango stood on unsteady feet,
and he had just raised his pistol when he saw his car as it skidded around the side of the wrecked trailer. The big car threw a rooster tail of alkali dirt into the air as it jumped out of the lot and skidded to a stop on the street between him and the men.

What Jango saw
next was the most wondrous and amazing site he had ever seen in his life. His car was filled with armed women! They hung out of the windows and fired double-barreled shotguns at his enemies like a post-apocalyptic version of Bonnie and Clyde.

His
injuries had stretched even his unnatural endurance to the breaking point, and he barely felt the impact as he collapsed to the ground. Jango felt his life’s blood leaking from a hundred different wounds, and he knew that he was through.

A dull roaring sound filled his ears, and as his vision faded, Jango saw Vanessa climb from the driver's seat of his car. She held a double-barreled shotgun in each hand as she screamed, “You mother-fuckers leave my Jango alone!”

He heard the heavy “Boom!” of shotguns, and
Jango smiled as his whole world faded into darkness.

Chapter
11:

No
Flowers For Jango’s Grave

Jango re
gained consciousness by inches. The first clue that he had that he was still alive was the pulsing throb of his heartbeat. Next, his hearing returned, and he heard muffled voices deep in conversation. As he regained consciousness more fully, the voices became clearer, and clearer. Soon, he recognized one of the voices as Vanessa’s, and the other voice belonged to one of the nurses.

Jango's eyelids felt like they weighed
a ton as he forced them open. He blinked against the bright lights of what appeared to be a fully functional operating room. The first thing he saw when his eyes had adjusted to the light was Vanessa with her hands resting lightly on the shoulders of the nurse who had put her arm around Vanessa. The two women stood at the foot of his bed, and they began kissing deeply with their bodies pressed tightly against one another.

Jango noticed th
at Vanessa was wearing heavy biker leathers and that she had a shotgun riding on her back in a scabbard. She also had a knife and a pistol on a belt that was loosely slung around her hips.

“
Hey, this might be my only chance to see two chicks get it on,” Jango said in a raspy voice. “You mind stepping over where I can see you both a little better?”

Vanessa started violently, and then gasped as tears
started to fall down her face. “Jango, Jango, Jango! I just fucking knew you were too tough to die!” Vanessa hugged him, and then kissed him on his cheek.

Jango noticed that her kiss felt strange, and he reached his hand up to feel his face.
It felt as if he had been growing a beard for weeks or even a month. “How long was I out?” He asked Vanessa.

“
You've been in a coma for three weeks,” said the nurse who had been making out with Vanessa.

Jango looked at the two women and thought that they made a good couple
.

Jango
said, “You two look good together. You look happy, like a couple of fucking peas.” Then he added, “Little sister, you look like a hard-core biker bitch.” Jango had just paid her what he considered a compliment, and by the expression of pride and embarrassment on her face, he could see that Vanessa had taken it that way.

T
he nurse snorted, and said, “All men are pigs.”

“
Not all men,” Jango replied. “Some of the men are zombies.” Then he laughed like crazy at his own joke.

Vanessa
burst out laughing as well.

T
he nurse turned to her and asked, “Is he always like this?”

Vanessa
replied, “I sure as hell hope so.” As Vanessa and Jango shared a look that could never be interpreted by anyone outside of their clan, he knew that no matter what relationship Vanessa had with the nurse, she would never turn her back on him or betray him.

A sudden thought occurred to Jango
, and he asked, “My stick, my stick, where the hell is my stick?” He felt a pulse of superstitious panic race through his body, almost as if a part of himself was lost.

“
Calm down, honey,” Vanessa said as she reached underneath Jango's hospital bed and retrieved his trusty Ironwood stick. She handed the stick to him, and he heaved a sigh of relief.

Instantly, he felt better, and he asked Vanessa, “Is there any way I can get something to eat, and drink? I feel really, really hungry.”

Vanessa patted his cheek, and left to get him some food and water.

When Vanessa left, Jango could tell by the nurse's body language that she wanted to say something. Her pursed lips and rigid posture started to make him angry, so he told her, “Well, spit it the fuck out already.”

The nurse's head snapped toward Jango,
and her eyes narrowed in anger. He responded to the implied threat of her sudden movement and facial expression by sitting up in bed as he pinned her in place with his eyes.

The nurse's eyes instantly opened wide, and went wet with fear.

Jango forced himself to back down, and he said in his sweetest voice, “Go ahead, tell me what you want to tell me, or ask me what you want to ask me.”

The nurse took several breaths before s
he spoke. “Vanessa has this idea in her head that she's going with you to Phoenix. I tried to tell her that she doesn't need to go there. All the medication she could ever need is right here.” Then in a softer voice, the nurse said, “And I'm here, and I wish she would stay because she is the most beautiful person I've ever met, and I love her.”

The raw, naked emotion that Jango saw in
the woman's face made him wish for a love like that, and it also caused his whimsy to sway. He found himself liking the woman, so he hurried to reassure her.

“
Look, uh, wait, I don't even know your name. What is your name?” Jango asked.

“
Evelyn, Eve for short,” the woman answered.

“
All right, Eve, it's very nice to meet you. Look, there is no reason in the world for Vanessa to go to Phoenix with me. If the medication she needs is here, then she is
not
going to Phoenix with me. You see, I am walking on the Apocalypse Road, the road of revenge, and that road only leads to the grave. Vanessa is my sister, and I will not let her walk that road with me. I'm a man born to blood and pain, and peace would be a killing blow for me. I eat food and drink water to maintain my body, but what truly sustains me is the vendetta, and worshiping the only God who will have me; revenge. I am a violent man, and I will never be anything else. But Vanessa is different; she was made for peace, and for love. If that's what you are offering her, then you have my support and my blessing.” Jango finished with a sigh.

Eve looked relieved
for a moment, but then her face tightened with worry. “I have to tell you something else, too,” she said hesitantly.

“Whatever it is, just spit it out, you don’t have to sugar-coat anything with me,
Eve,” he told her. She looked so worried, though, that he started to feel nervous. “What is it? Did you find a tumor or something? Am I going to die?”

One of his deepest fears was to die slowly in the grips of some debilitating disease
, and he had sworn long ago that if he ended up like that he would kill himself.

“No, no! Nothing
like that,” Eve said. She looked hesitant, but then her face strengthened with resolve and she blurted out, “You should be dead, and your blood isn’t exactly human!”

He felt the icy fingers of dread caress his spine at Eve’s words, and he whispered, “What do you mean, not exactly human?
”

Eve looked around to see if anyone was near, and then leaned in close to
him. “I examined your blood when you came in because I could not believe that you were still breathing after all of the injuries you sustained. I was also curious about your “super strength.” When you picked up that giant pot, I was stunned. Anyway, I just wanted to know about you, and also see if you were turning into one of those zombies. What I found was that your entire system, right down to the cellular level, had somehow fought the zombie virus to a draw.”

It took Jango a moment to understand what she was saying, and when realization dawned on him, he looked ill.

“So I am…what? Am I half fuckin’ goober?” His voice had a tremulous quality that made him feel disgusted with himself.

Eve looked at him and said, “No, you are something new. Everybody
is infected by what Vanessa calls the “Z-Virus.” We all have it. Some people died from the virus itself, but even the people who didn’t die right away are infected. That is why when someone dies, their body comes back. I have examined the “blood” from zombies, and I have seen how the virus changes the human tissue.”

What she said next shocked Jango. “Have you noticed that the zombies aren’t rotting and decaying like movie zombies do? That’s because the virus is turning them into something else; they aren’t dead humans anymore, they are…. something else.”

Eve looked at him and said, “You healed from your injuries at an incredible rate, and you have an unnatural amount of strength. Those are similar to the changes in the zombies. Their changes are more pronounced, though. Whatever Mosnato did, they opened up Pandora’s Box, Jango, and I don’t think it can ever be shut again. The virus’ ability to adapt is incredible, and I don’t think there is any way to predict how it will behave.”

J
ust then, Vanessa walked into the room with a cafeteria tray that was loaded with mashed potatoes and an enormous bowl of what smelled like beef stew. Jango made a hushing motion at Eve, and smiled at Vanessa.

Jango
’s stomach rumbled audibly, “Glergoogloop!” The sound made Vanessa giggle. She set the tray on his lap and pressed a lever with her foot that made the bed fold him into a seated position.

Jango
dug in and wolfed down the huge tray of food in just a couple of minutes, and then thirstily slurped nearly half a gallon of water from the pitcher that Vanessa had brought to him.

When
he had finished the huge meal, he asked Vanessa, “Where's the rest of my gear, little sister?” He was specifically thinking of the LMK knife that had belonged to Sonja. He hoped that he hadn't lost it.

“
All your stuff is here, Jango. It’s right under the bed, every last bit of it,” Vanessa replied.

“
She spent days searching for anything that you might've dropped,” Eve said with a hint of pride. “She wouldn't give up until she knew that she’d found everything that was yours.”

Jango looked at the two of them, and
then decided to go ahead and get his talk with Vanessa over with. He figured it was better to do it sooner rather than later. He believed in untarnished honesty when it came to people who he respected, or who he cared for.

Without preamble
, he said, “Vanessa, check it out, Sis. You have everything you need right here. Not only that, but everything here needs you. Do you understand what I'm saying? I've only known you for a little while, but I've claimed you as my blood. If I didn't really give a shit about you, I would let you go to Phoenix with me and I would throw you to the fucking wolves if I needed to. But I love you, and you can't walk the road that I am on. You have a chance to be a part of something here, and these people, they need you. They won't survive here on their own. You know it. If you look at it honestly, and see the cold truth, then you will see that these people will die without you to be their spine. I know you love me little sister, and I know that you would fight the devil himself to save me. But the problem is that I have become my own devil. I was fed the poisons of pain, hate, rage, and madness for too long. When I lost my armor, when Son..." Jango choked on her name for a moment, and then continued, “When Sonja touched me in a way that I'd never been touched before, she tore my armor away. Then when she turned into, into, one of those wailing, screaming pieces of undead shit, I fucking lost it. I can never go back. I used to be able to paste a fake smile on my face and sit around and fool everybody; but not now. All the nasty truth that used to hide in the deepest darkest corners of my mind, it broke loose and came home to stay. And to tell you the truth, I love them, and I cannot imagine going back to the way I used to be. Hiding my truth and my strength under layers of chains? Well fuck that! I am going to walk the ways of death, and bring all the fires of hell down on the goobers and all the human zombies too. My road will only end when I'm dead.” He finished quietly. “You have a chance, Vanessa, the chance to live a life of peace and love.”

Vanessa felt the ring of truth in
his words reverberate through every fiber of her being. She knew that it was the truth, but that did not stop her from feeling an almost physical sense of loss from the knowledge that Jango had chosen a road that would eventually lead to his death.

She had never known anyone like him before. She had never even heard of anyone like him before, but she had dreamed of someone like Jango all her life. When her father had hurt her as a child, she would go away inside her head and imagine
that a knight in shining armor would come to save her. He would whisk her away on his horse to a place where she could be herself, and never be the plaything of any man ever again. Even though Jango wasn't exactly a knight in shining armor, he had been willing to die so that she could live, and that
was
Vanessa's ideal of a knight in shining armor.

Vanessa felt Eve take her hand, and she gave
her hand a gentle squeeze to let her know that everything would be all right. Vanessa looked at Jango and said, “Well, you’re not gonna leave right away, right?”

He looked back at her, stretched his arms wide and smiled his lunatic
smile as he said, “Not right away, little sister, first I have to make sure that this area is a ZFZ, a zombie free zone! On top of that, I need to make sure you and your refugees know how to defend your turf against whatever or whoever might try to take your shit.”

Jango turned his body so
that his legs dangled over the side of the hospital bed. He reached up to feel his head, and was surprised to find out that his head had been shaved! His thick fingers traced a heavy ridge of scar tissue that went from just above his right eye, up to the crown of his head, and then all the way down behind his right ear.