ZOMBIE'S DOOM? "Chronicles of Jack Doom" (8 page)

"Yes sir," the man answered, as he interlocked his fingers on his head.

As I patted him down for any hidden weapons he might have had on his person, I asked him.

"What's your name mister?"

"Jason, my name is Jason Bla..."

I interrupted him.

"Last names don't mean dick anymore, most of the people I've run into don't live long enough for me to bother remembering their last names anyway. So save your breath Jason."

Having Jason at a great disadvantage, and after having found no more weapons on him, and after checking to make sure that his gun was as empty as he claimed, I thought that it might be fun to mess with him a little.

After all, the noise of the dropped rifle had not attracted any eaters, and fun was a commodity that was not very plentiful during these arduous times.

"My name is Jack, Jack Doom!" I said smiling, waiting for his response, given I had just told him that last names didn't mean
dick
anymore, and then proceeded to tell him mine, well kind of.

His reaction was anything but what I had expected it would be.

"Ja...ack Do...oom?" he stammered, as he turned toward me.

"Yes, Jack Doom," I answered. "Do you have a problem with that?"

"No sir, not at all Mr. Doo...om," he stammered once more.

"Then why are you acting so scared?"

"It's just that I've heard of you, heard about some of the things you've done, some of the things that you might do."

******

Nobody had called him Jack Doom since he was serving overseas in the Marine Corps, so for someone to say that they've heard of him could mean only one thing. Someone he had been in combat with had talked to this man, and that person could only be the Sarge.

******

With the smile now completely gone from my face, I insisted the man give me some answers.

"Where did
you
hear the name Jack Doom?" I asked, glaring at Jason once more.

"From a man I met a few weeks ago."

"What man?" I demanded.

"Just a man, I run into people every once in a while. I mostly try not to get killed by them, and I try not to have to kill them either, although, it doesn't always work out that way. I mean the part about not having to kill them, not the part about me not getting killed by them." Jason began to meander.

"I figured that out all by myself, I'm kind of smart that way," I told him.

"I'm just trying to be clear Mr. Doom."

"Well Jason, what did this man look like?" I asked, sensing that I had a lead on the ever-elusive Sarge's whereabouts.

"Well, he was kind of stocky, and he had red hair... and he was traveling with a girl," Jason answered.

"What did this girl look like?"

"She was a blonde, nice to look at, even though she had a black eye when I saw her.

I still wouldn't mind wallowing naked on top of her if you know what I mean," Jason said, as he raised his left eyebrow several times in a row.

"Yeah, I know what you mean," I answered, nodding.

"And she carried a .22 rifle, looked almost like our guns, and she called him Ron."

"Did he have a name for her," I asked, now trying to get the vision of what I imagined Beth's naked body to look like out of my mind (but not trying too
hard
, no pun intended).

Jason put his fingers to his chin and thought about my question for a moment, and then answered.

"He called her Bev, no wait, he called her Beth, that was it, Beth. I mean when he wasn't calling her
you little bitch
, or
you fucking whore
."

"When did you run into those two?" I asked.

"It was about a month ago I think, it's a little hard to keep track of time these days, but I think it was four or five weeks ago," Jason answered, feeling a little more relaxed now as I had yet to kill him.

"Where at?" I asked, still glaring at Jason, but now mostly just for show.

"East of here, somewhere in Oklahoma."

"Somewhere in Oklahoma? Where in Oklahoma?" I asked angrily, and not at all just for show.

"It was just outside Oklahoma City, near a little place called Shawnee. There's a compound there made up of a bunch of shipping container stacked on top of each other and laid out in a square so that the guards posted on top can see down on every side," Jason answered, fearing that he'd upset me (and he had).

"Are they still there?"

"Probably not, nobody stays there for very long," Jason answered.

"Did they say where they were going?" I asked, still pointing my weapon at him.

There was no doubt that Jason was afraid of me, so I saw no reason not to exploit his fear for the benefit of what I now saw as my mission in life (the painful death of my old
friend
the Sarge).

"They didn't say where they were headed and I didn't ask. But my guess is that they were going to go east, because they hung around with a bunch that kept talking about joining a band of survivors that's hold up somewhere they called the
Badlands of Indiana
, even though people kept telling them to beware of the Indiana Badlands.

Some guy they called
The Caucasian
is supposedly the leader of that group."

"The Caucasian in Indiana huh, sounds like a really fun crowd," I said chuckling, figuring that I had Jason completely cowed, but still not letting my guard down.

"If the Shawnee site is so safe and secure, why would anyone want to leave there and go to a place called the
Badlands
?" I asked suspiciously.

"That compound in Shawnee is just a way station, the people in charge only let you stay there for a few weeks tops, and then they send you packing, they need the space for the next weary travelers," Jason answered, forcing a smile to his face.

"And what if somebody doesn't want to leave, then what?"

"I don't know, I was only there for about two weeks and then I left on my own."

I had gleaned all the information I was going to get out of Jason, so I smiled and told him.

"You can put your hands down now, that is if you're going to stay calm and not do something stupid?"

"I'm not going to do anything stupid to you Mr. Doom, you'd kill me, like I said before, I heard of some of the things that you've done."

"Good, because here's the way I see it. Either you're with me, or you're against me, nothing in between," I told him, as I lowered my gun from his face.

"I'm with you Mr. Doom, I truly am."

"Then stop calling me Mr. Doom, my name is Jack," I said still smiling, although still ready to kill Jason anytime at the drop of a hat. Any hat!

"Okay Mr. Doom, I... I mean Jack," Jason said nervously, still not ready to accept the fact that I wasn't going to kill him where he stood.

"Relax Jason. If I were going to kill you, you'd already be dead," I said, smiling again as I lied to him.

"Now since we're going to be all friendly like, you can help me find a suppressor for this gun," I told him, pulling out the Beretta I had stuffed in my belt, and pointing it in his face.

"Sure thing Jack," Jason answered, as he began to nervously look around the room, not realizing that my new Beretta was not loaded.

After searching Jason and knowing that he had only the M-4 type rife as his only weapon, I suggested to him that he might consider grabbing another gun, since after all, he was in a gun shop.

"You could probably use another gun Jason, I prefer a 9mm pistol. Ammo is much more plentiful and it's lighter than the .45 stuff. And 9mm does an adequate job on the eaters, and anybody else for that matter."

"What's that weird looking gun you've got strapped on your back, I've never seen anything like that before. It is a gun isn't it?" Jason asked.

"This was my youngest son's carbine, it's a 9mm rifle, it's called a Sub-2000 and uses Glock mags," I told him. "It looks weird because it folds in half for transport. Pretty
zoot
uh?"

I couldn't resist showing Jason the carbine that Jacob had used to kill so many zombies, so I laid my M-4 down on the floor beside me and pulled the rifle off my back.

Because of the way the Sub-2000 was designed, you could carry it folded, with a fully loaded 33 round magazine inserted into its magazine well, and that's exactly how I was transporting it.

Like I mentioned earlier in the apocalypse, "Mama Doom didn't raise a total fool".

Jason had yet to make any sudden moves to alarm me, or show me in any way that he was a danger to me (that's why he was still alive), and I wanted to keep it that way. So I figured another little scare, just to keep him honest might be called for in this case.

As I took the small carbine by the pistol grip of the weapon with my right hand, I released the locking latch with my left hand and flipped the barrel up and forward, snapping it into place. Then I twisted the gun to the left and I slapped the bolt handle down feeding a round into the chamber of the carbine.

The whole operation from the time I had the rifle in my hands, to the time I pointed the loaded weapon at Jason's face, took less than three seconds from start to finish.

"That's very impressive, but could you point that thing somewhere else?" Jason asked, not sure if I was going to pull the trigger or not. "Pointing guns at me seems to be becoming a habit of yours."

"Like I said before, if I were going to shoot you, you'd already be shot," I answered, smiling once more as I lied to him again.

******

As Jack leaned down to pick up his tomahawk, he noticed a silencer lying under it. He had inadvertently dropped his combat hatchet right on top of the very suppressor that he had been searching for before Jason had entered the shop.

******

"Here's what I've been looking for," I said, as I ripped the package open that held the silencer.

"And here's what I've been looking for," Jason announced, as he waved a box of ammo over his head.

******

The two men spent the next hour fitting their firearms with sound suppressors, and gathering ammunition for their guns. Jack kept a close eye on Jason as they did so, still not trusting the man he had just met.

As the two men worked side by side, Jason's curiosity finally got the best of him and he just had to ask Jack the question that had been eating at him (no pun intended).

******

"Hey Jack, I don't mean to pry, but why are you so interested in that guy Sarge and his girl friend?"

"I never said Beth was his girlfriend."

"Come on Jack, a guy traveling around the country in the middle of an apocalypse with a good looking female, she's his girlfriend,
one way or another
," Jason stated, as a smile broke out on his face.

"Maybe?" I said. "I guess I'll find out when I catch up to them."

"She's not your girlfriend is she? Did the Sarge run off with your girlfriend, and now you're going after them to get her back?" Jason asked excitedly.

"Beth has nothing to do with it, at least not yet anyway, I hardly know her, so calm down and keep your dick in your pants," I answered, thinking that Jason was going to need a cold shower if he kept thinking like that.

"So if Beth isn't your girlfriend, and you're not chasing after them to get her back, why are you chasing after them?"

"I don't remember saying that I was
chasing
after anybody."

"I saw the look in your eyes while you were asking me about them, you're chasing after them all right, and I wouldn't want to be this Sarge of yours when you catch up to them," Jason said, smiling even bigger now.

"You must have misread the look I was giving you. That was the look I use when I'm trying to decide whether or not to kill someone like you." I said smirking, while watching Jason's smile fade away.

"The Sarge is an old friend, we fought together in the sand box, we met up some time ago and then got separated.

I'm just trying to join him again," I told Jason.

I certainly didn't want to tell Jason the truth, which was what he had already guessed. So I told him a half truth and hoped that he would drop the subject.

My dealings with the Sarge, past or future was none of his business, and if we did end up traveling together, when we caught up to the Sarge and Beth I didn't want him saying something to either one of them that might give away my true intentions.

My answer satisfied Jason's curiosity, at least for the moment, but I was still left wondering why I was bothering to tell this perfect stranger anything.