REPOING THE DEAD

PART THREE

A second later Danny was pushing back the rubber accordion style curtain and emerging with a twelve gauge in both hands. He handed one to me and to my surprise I just looked at it like it was some alien relic.

“Here. It’s pump action. Press this button there to pump in a load.”

Danny took the shotgun from me and showed me how to activate the rounds, not that I needed his instructions. I had used pump action shotguns in the past. Not while on a job since Mel and Frank forbade guns on our repoing gigs, but I had hunted with a shotgun and .30-.30 as a teenager.

“Thanks,” I whispered red faced.

“Eyes open,” Danny said as he moved to the RV’s side door making sure that it was dead-bolted.

“What happened to the lights?”

“Someone cut them genius,” Dave said in his most snarky voice. Again I wanted to pummel that asshole.

I held my tongue knowing that an argument would just draw more attention from whomever cut the lights. Danny sat down and switched on a battery powered shortwave C.B. system. He lifted the mic and started tapping out, what I assumed was Morse Code.

“What’s he doing?” I asked Dave.

“Just sit back and shut up repo man. This don’t concern you.”

“You know you’re a real dick.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

Dave flashed his crotch. I just shook my head. He wasn’t growing on me.

Whatever Danny was doing with his Morse Code he seemed to have finished it.

“Not there,” Danny said.

“Sometimes he goes out, or sleeps…”

“Or drinks himself into a stupor,” Danny finished.

I didn’t have any idea what they were arguing about. Danny must have noticed my mystified expression.

“Sit tight,” he said picking up an extra set of binoculars and walked to the opposite end of the RV. The Roach Brother’s seemed tense now. Family problems, maybe.

I just sat like a helpless turd with the shotgun in my hands as the Roach Brothers took charge. If the brothers were correct about someone cutting our power it couldn’t have been one of the undead, could it? Mel and me had worked plenty hostile repo jobs where the undead we were repoing had been more than dangerous, but never had I heard of an undead being smart enough to cut power-lines. That’s when I remembered my bullet wound, the sniper shot.

“Oh s**t,” I whispered.

Dave looked back at me with an expression that said – ‘What did you do?’ I just shrugged back at him, but he wouldn’t take his grimy brown eyes off me. Dave Roach was kind of creepy in that psycho militia way. He seemed like the kind of dude who, left alone with you for too long, would either kill you or worse.

“You said, oh s**t. Why?”

Shrugging again I held onto the shotgun a little tighter. He stepped close to me with his own shotgun poised.

“The power outage,” I said. “If it was something caused by a third party my bet would not be on the walking stiffs outside but on that sniper somewhere in the night,” I said.

“Somewhere in the night?” Davie said scornfully, making fun of my phrase.

“Just a thought.”

I stood up feeling my bladder filled with urine aching to be let out. With the silence surrounding us then and the previous adrenaline slowly seeping away I felt almost like I was going to piss myself if I didn’t make it to the toilet and quick.

“Hey no whacking off in there. Toilet papers for shits only,” Dave laughed for a minute and then I cut off his stupid voice as I closed the bathroom door locking it.

Typical cramped quarters inside the jon. There was a small mesh glass window to the right of my head. Looking through it all I saw was a display of the nearby street light. The light filled the mesh window. The interior of the jon stank like Dave Roach’s breath. I grinned at that and unlocked the window opening it. The cool night air felt good against my warm face. Unbuckling my jeans I let lose the stream of urine into the toilet, or mostly into the toilet. I grinned again thinking that maybe Dave would sit down to take a dump and find sprinkled urine from yours truly. That would really piss the asshole off.

I was thinking of how modestly clever I was urinating on the Roach’s toilet seat when I felt a coldness grip me like nothing I had felt before. Looking right I saw the shadow of the herd outside of the RV. Something else stirred me. The blade driving through the open window quickly introduced me to what stirred that fear. With my pecker still dangling out I felt the tip of a long carving knife impale itself against my temple for just a split second before I drew back, saving my life.

A massive arm stretched through the open window and I screamed like a little girl. It was Edward Gains the serial killer. I wasn’t sure if my scream was from the giants arm or the fact that my ball-sack was raked across my sharp metal zipper. 

The twelve gauge was leaning against the door where I had left it on entering and I grabbed it thinking I was racking in a load. The arm reached down and the long blade, must have been at least eight inches, slashed at me almost ripping through my blue jeans. I didn’t bother aiming. Instead I just pulled the trigger on the shotgun only to hear an empty click.

“Assholes,” I shouted knowing that it was Dave’s fault the shotgun I got was empty. He probably unloaded sometime when I wasn’t paying attention.

The tip of the blade pierced my shoulder then and I screamed again. By then Danny was at the door hammering on it. I had locked the jon, a habit of mine growing up in a house with five older brothers.

“Unlock the door Spencer.”

Danny Roach’s muffled voice shouted from the other side of the door. He was moving the handle but the lock was holding. The blood from my shoulder started to really run now. The gunshot wound in my side started to bleed too. I was in bad shape. The giant Edward Gains, tried desperately to break his way into the jon through the open window. Silly me, opening the window to get some fresh air. I swung the shotgun at the arm and heard a crunch but Gains continued swinging at me.

“Spencer! The door!”

It was Dave Roach slamming his fists against the door. Staring up I could only see the huge arm and knife trying to kill me. I reached feebly for the door lock and must have hit it just right because as the blade dug into my shoulder again the door opened and Danny pulled me free of the bathroom. He and Dave both watched the huge arm with the blood tipped carving knife pull back out of the window.

“We got him,” Dave shouted like a kid at Christmas.

“Dave wait,” Danny said pulling me to my feet.

I was so dazed from the terror and the adrenaline that my legs felt like spaghetti. I fell flat on my ass on the cold linoleum floor. Dave was racing toward the door.

“Dave hold on.”

Just as Dave was about to exit the RV a bullet winged off the door frame. He jumped back inside.

“f*****g sniper!”

Dave kicked the front door shut and then crawled up to a sitting position to lock the door. The glass in the door shattered a second later raining shards down on Dave’s bald head. I was secretly cheering for the sniper.

“Where are the shells?”

I pointed at the empty twelve gauge in my lap. Danny glared at his brother and Dave just shrugged brushing shards of glass off his shoulders and out of his mustache. Danny stayed low and opened a utility closet and tossed me a box of twelve gauge shotgun shells. I started loading them in forgetting about my bloody shoulder. When all six shells were in the gun I pointed it at Dave Roach.

“I oughta blow your ugly head off,” I said.

Dave got to his feet thrusting out his meager chest.

“Go for it,” he said.

Danny said nothing just watched us play out this testosterone filled pissing match.

“I just might.”

Dave just glared at me for another minute and then the sound of the herd was just outside the front door. They started to rock the RV.

“s**t,” I said almost losing my balance.

Dave just laughed as he walked past me to the driver seat of the RV.

“f*****g repo trash.”

I heard him murmur.

The herd seemed determined to flip us. I braced myself sitting on one of the bench seats. Dave took the driver’s seat I heard the first shotgun blast from Danny. He had positioned himself wisely on the right side of the RV where he was hidden behind a side shelving unit. This hopefully kept him clear from the sniper. I watched out my side of the RV and saw two undead walkers heads explode from Danny’s rounds. He unloaded six and took out five walkers. That was the bulk of the herd. The others did not withdraw but continued rocking the RV as Dave cranked over the ignition.

“Let’s get out of here,” Danny shouted as he started to reload his smoking shotgun.

I just sat paralyzed for a minute staring at my wounds.

Dave dropped the RV into drive and floored the accelerator. I flew back against my seat. The shotgun fell on the floor; thank God it did not discharge. If it had, no doubt Dave would have busted my balls until the day I died, or longer. Danny quickly took the shotgun seat in the front of the RV firing off more rounds at the herd. They were decreasing substantially in number now. I looked for the seat belt, found it and buckled in.

#

Agent Karris smiled as he removed his eye from the night vision scope atop his sniper rifle. Agent Dobbs sat in the front of the van chewing on a Mars bar laughing at how the freelancers scuttled out of there like their heads were on fire and their asses was catching.

“Not bad,” Karris said as he started breaking down the rifle.

“Still got it,” Dobbs said checking his wrist watch. “Come on shifts nearly over lets wrap it up and get a beer.”

“We’ll do.”

As Dobbs lifted the last of the candy bar into his mouth a long eight inch razor sharp blade buried itself in his throat. Blood spirted from his mouth with chunks of Mars chocolate mingled with it. Dobbs didn’t make a sound. His eyes shifted up in surprise. Staring back was evil personified in the sunken undead eyes of Edward Gains, zombie at large.

Karris was on the other side of the van and hadn’t noticed his partner dying yet.

Gains held the hilt of the knife in his hand feeling the hot steaming blood coat the fist. Still looking at the dying agent he withdrew his hand, leaving the knife in Dobbs’s throat and licked the wet bloody palm. The undead dude’s eyes lit up. More of his horrible history flooded back into his conscious mind. His already deep creepy grin went deeper, almost splitting his face with horrific bloody glee. Another murder and another memory. This time Edward Gains, the undead Edward Gains, remembered killing a family in their small suburban home on Greene Street. How was this possible? Memories in an undead brain with no electricity running through it. It should not be possible. The images of the family, the Rorschach Family, on Green Street. The mother, a once buxom brunette, then starting to go to seed, was the last one he killed. She had hips on her and her p***y spread wide enough, just wide enough to fit all twelve inches of his rock hard erection inside her before he killed her. The husband and father died as a Eunuch without as much as a squeak. In the past Gains had decided to take his time and pleasure with all of his victims. It was his world that they entered when he took over, but there had been more than one male that he had tried to kill him. That had been a mistake. The creeps he left alive had almost taken off Gains’s head at those times, if you believe that, a big bastard like Edward Gains.

This night, the memory he was in tuned to, dealt with two children both girls preteen girls, Gains’s favorite age. They were so innocent, not having bled yet. There seemed to be some kind of magic in those young ones. Maybe it was the same magic that brought the bodies back to life? Gains couldn’t think on this now. The more he thought the more clouded his mind became. Killing. Killing was what cleared his head.

“Dobbs?”

The voice caught Gains’s attention and he turned to face the voice. The agent he had stabbed was dead now, growing cold. The blood on his hand started growing sticky. He looked from the dead agent to the blood and then up at another guy standing at the edge of the van looking at him. A second later Gains pulled the long carving knife from the dead guy’s throat. It took a few seconds to pull the blade clean, must have gotten stuck in a bone maybe.

“This is Agent Karris...”

The other agent was calling someone on his shoulder radio.

Gains threw the carving knife at the agent and the blade sunk into the guys shoulder. Not a kill shot but not bad either. Gains felt his mobility pick up again. He did more than just lurch forward toward the guy this time. The agent’s reaction was fast. He didn’t bother removing the knife instead he lifted a side arm and unloaded the entire magazine on Gains. Each bullet struck the serial killers torso pushing him back but not stopping him. The big undead walker moved fast reaching out both long gnarly hands. The strength in those hands was like vice grips and would crush anything in their grasp.  

“Dobbs?”

The agent looked down once more at his dead partner and up at the undead Edward Gains starting to back pedal. The pain in his shoulder was all over his face but the guy still moved fast keeping a safe distance between him and the walking dead. As the agent reached the end of the block several feet away he stopped and shouted back at the serial killer

“Edward Martin Gains?”

That sparked the undead walker’s attention. Gains looked up and scowled at the guy. The agent grinned and then disappeared around the corner.

Chapter Four

“You’re absolutely positive?” The thick hipster voice of the world’s most powerful man safely hidden behind the mega structure of his ivory tower spoke. Since the undead’s return the White House had been fortified beyond anything ever conceived before.

Agent Jack Karris sat back listening to the United States president as he droned on. Another politician, another asshole.

“Yes Mr. President,” Agent Karris said simply.

He hated talking to the prez in person. The guy was a condescending asshole. He either spoke from a place of ignorance, or fear. Either way it was a dangerous position to make global decisions from.

“Okay bag and bring our subject zero in. Work out the logistics with Colonel Ramsey. And make sure that Senator Matheson is in the loop. I know I don’t have to tell you your job Jack, but hey that’s why they pay me the big bucks right? We good?”

“Yeah, we good?”

“Is there a problem agent?”

“No problem Mr. President,” Karris said wanting to grind the knife’s blade he just had removed from his shoulder into the US president’s heart.

“Get it done.”

The line died.

Karris killed his end and dropped the SATphone on the table in front of him. He was back at the FBI medical unit. His shoulder, the one that took Edward Gains’s knife, ached like hell. It was fully attended to and wrapped up tight now. So was Agent Dobbs, in the morgue. Another causality of this governments idiocrasy. When were the FBI actually going to make headway on the undead front? It had been a decade and their agents were no closer to solving the return as they had been when it happened. The status quo fell onto Karris and the Undead Special Task Force, USTF. Karris looked at the SATphone thinking of his teams next move now that Agent Dobbs was dead he would need to bring in more new recruits. At least that was something to be thankful for.

He pulled a pile of files to him. Each tab had an agent’s name. Each agent was handpicked by Senator Margret Matheson to deal with this Gains issue. The subject zero. Karris had his own reservations about the senators peaked interest in this serial killer. Margret Matheson had showed very little initiative regarding the USTF until the death and return of Edward Gains. Now she was asking for regular reports from his team, which had now become her team. Speaking of her team there were five folders, four male agents and one female. None had family. None had any past connection with undead relatives. All had high kill rates. All had above average I.Q.’s. Not a bad start.

Karris didn’t need to review all the case files just one, just the female agent – Madeline Bronx. Tough. Lethal. Hardcore beautiful. Not great combos when it came to dealing with male agents. The testosterone among the other four might be problematic. Karris felt his own c**k twitch looking at Agent Madeline Bronx’s profile.

“Enough,” Karris said running his hands over his face.

The five o’clock shadow would have to go before he left medical. For now he had pulled Intel on the three freelancers that survived the Edward Gains attack on 220 Elm. That had to take a lot of balls and luck, if Karris believed in luck, which he didn’t. The files were slim on all but one of them. Danny Roach ex-military, Marines. He had served in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan. Served with honors and then dropped out before his time. Why? Didn’t matter for now, for now Karris had to visit Agent Dobbs’s widow and tell her the bad news. Then he wanted to find out more about his boss Senator Margret Matheson and maybe why she chose these agents for her Undead Special Task Force.

This was going to be a long day.

#

Where did they go from here?

The Roach Brother’s RV was driving through the city trying to dust any possible fed tracking. It must have been the feds who shot at them. This Gains character seemed tro be a priority for them, why? Dusting federal agents wasn’t as easy as it sounded. Having spent a couple of tours in the Marines, Danny Roach knew that dusting the feds wasn’t like it seemed in the movies. As much as the films and television liked to make the feds out to be some combo Rambo meets Mission Impossible, James Bond bullshit, it just wasn’t the case. There were no super-humans running the show. Every man and women that worked the job punched a clock, drank coffee, ate bad food. It was true that surveillance of the American people had taken an upturn since George W. Bush’s reign though. Hidden cameras placed in strategic hot criminal spots of every major city was the current norm. These were the locations that they wanted to avoid.

This city, their city, was no exception. Danny didn’t have a grid of the city hotspots but having served the Marines in a special Intel unit, he had a pretty good idea of where those spots might be placed. And hell, he was a former exterminator, roaches were his thing. Most hotspots would be in the seeder locations of the city.

“Take a right. The Waterfalls carwash is a block over. We’ll hang in one of their bays until dawn,” Danny said.

Danny sat back in the passenger seat and moaned feeling the stiffness in his shoulder. The snipers bullet was still inside and he would eventually need to remove it. The shotgun was still hot. He set the gun aside and closed his eyes for a minute.

“Spencer? You okay back there?”

“Ah, yeah. Thanks,” the young repo man said.

Dave just growled sliding a cigarette between his lips and tossing Danny the pack. Pushing in the cigarette lighter in the front of the RV dashboard they made a right and pulled into the deserted Waterfalls carwash. Dave drove into one of the empty bays exited the vehicle and closed the front and back doors to the bay. The bright fluorescent lights cast down over the RV illuminating the interior in a creepy green glow.

Just as Dave slid back into the RV the lighter popped up. Danny removed it and lit both of their cigarettes.

They dragged for a long quiet moment. Dave looked over his shoulder into the back of the RV. Spencer seemed to be sleeping. He was quiet anyway. Dave looked at his brother for a second. He idolized the guy, a military hero, which was something Dave could never be. His psych evaluations failed across the board. An embarrassment.

“You know Dan maybe we could drive by the old place. Look in on...”

“f**k that.”

“I’m just saying pop has a lot of supplies that we could use…”

“He didn’t even answer the shortwave. He’s probably drunk.”

Danny dragged heavy on his cigarette and looked out the side window. He couldn’t believe that his brother was suggesting they go visit their old man. The guy, if he was their father, was a f*****g drunken piece of trash. His house, the two story dump they lived in as kids, was mostly boarded up now. The lawn was a tangled jungle of weeds and dandelions. The forgotten swing set behind the house was nothing but a skeletal relic of a worse time. Most kids, now adults, can look back and remember their childhood with pride and a little nostalgia. Not Danny Roach not with an old man like George Roach.

“f**k that,” Danny said again snuffing his cigarette and closing his eyes.

Dave looked at his older brother, a dude he loved and admired more than any other man on this planet. Danny was right of course. Their dad was a nasty piece of work but Dave still held out hope that one day they could reconcile. Just then movement in the back caught his red bloodshot eye. It was Spencer watching him, seeing his second of weakness, and Dave flipped him the bird.

“f*****g repo man,” Dave said snuffing his own cigarette and closing his eyes after locking the RV.