The Rise of Macon: A Zombie Novel (Macon Saga Book 2) (7 page)

The next room, the main space of the office, was a large
room converted into a working area, complete with portioned work spaces made
from chest, high movable walls. A standard office. The main aisle, directly in
front of James, was situated between a wall and the work area. Down the aisle,
grouped together on the floor, four diseased waited. Their heads snapped up as
James’ boot scuffed a cable cover lying on the floor. James watched the four
diseased stand, lift their heads in the air and advance towards him. He moved
slightly to the left, placing his back near one of the walls, and waited for
them to come.

The dark room didn't make it easy for James to make out
details, but he could see all four of the diseased wore a similarly dark blue
uniform, with their names stitched on them. Coast Guard. James watched the four
closing on him, his heart starting to beat quickly, like it always did before
he entered a fight. It was an old, comfortable feeling, one he hadn't felt it a
long time and part of him relished it, like welcoming an old friend home. The
downside was the fear it came from, which James easily pushed aside. He'd faced
worst. The four diseased almost seemed hesitant at first, unsure of what they'd
found. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, they attacked.

James needed to space them, to create room to deal with
them one at a time, so he front kicked the closest one to him. It was a woman,
a small woman, not weighting more than 100 pounds and the kick sent her flying
into the person behind her. Two to deal with now. James lunged forward, with
the short sword he'd taken from Kyle, and planted the steel directly in the eye
socket of one of the men. He felt the sides of the blade scrape bone as it
easily slid through the grey flesh of the diseased. It came to a sudden stop
and James performed a front kick again, pulling the bloodied blade out as the
man flew back, dead.

The second attacker latched onto his left arm, its grip
strong, but mostly clutching the fabric of the large coat James wore. He swung
the already bloodied short sword and hit the man in the temple with the hilt. The
hit staggered the diseased, but didn't finish him. James twisted his body,
pulling his now free left arm up and sending the short, black blade up through
the soft flesh underneath its jaw. The black blade, thought shorter than the
sword, still tore through meat and gristle to plunge into the diseased’s brain.
The second attacker fell and James turned back, waiting for the next two.

The small woman, having regained her footing, attacked as
the last diseased, a penguin like man, wobbled to grab James from his right. Knowing
he couldn't kill both at once, James dropped his black blade, grabbed the
advancing woman by the throat and squeezed it like a rotten lemon. With the
struggling diseased thrashing in his vice like grip, James prepared a third
front kick, which landed in the gut of the obese man, barely rocking him back. Grunting,
James picked up the woman and threw her at the fat man.

Though strong, the disease ravaging their bodies didn't
make them any heavier and the throw had all of James’ considerable force behind
it. The fat man lost his balance and stumbled, the woman hitting him and
flipping over behind him. James didn't wait this time, he straddled the fat
man, shoving the sword into the top of his head. The fat man fell still and
James, breathing heavy, ripped the sword out. He stalked the young diseased
woman, wanting to finish this. She attacked, unmindful of the loss of her
friends or her certain demise, viciously trying to bring her jaws within reach
of James. He almost easily pushed her reaching arms to the side, setting her
off balance and slid the sword through her eye socket.

James quickly turned around in a circle, checking in every
direction to find anyone else to kill, anyone else to fight. There was no one. He
let his arm drop, fatigue hitting him, as it always did after a fight. He
carefully walked around the cubicles, looking into everyone, but there was nobody
left, except an unmoving body laying at the end of the aisle.

Kyle! James jerked up, having almost forgotten his friend. Panic,
like none he'd felt facing the diseased, gripped him. How long had he been
fighting? Seconds? Minutes?  He hadn't cleared the whole building, but the guy
at the end of the aisle wasn't moving and James’ fear for this friend urged him
to check on him. James moved swiftly, but silently, back through the rows of
cubicles, over the unmoving diseased and back through the glass doors. He kept
to the side of the building and saw his friend still leaned up against the dead
bush, out to the world. James breathed a sigh of relief as he saw him still laying
there. He grabbed both packs, both rifles and again picked his friend up by the
collar, and dragged him inside the building.

James needed to clear the rest of the building, so he
pulled Kyle into a cubicle, moved aside a rolling office chair and put him
under a desk. He put the bags in front of Kyle, rolled the chair back and
turned to finish the job.

He walked towards the man he knew was lying at the end of
the aisle and stopped dead when he saw him. James was no rookie when it came to
blood. In his previous life he'd seen kids shot down, people beat to a pulp and
general horror. But what he saw in front of him almost made him want to run and
hide like a child. An average sized man, who at one time wore the same uniform
as the others, lay before him. His upper torso was bloody but intact, the rest
of him wasn't. Where the man's legs had once been, now only two bones
protruded, the meat having been eaten away. Blood, meat, muscles and skin lay
everywhere, like a bomb had exploded from his insides.

James turned his eyes from the loathe sight before him and
knelt down carefully, his body ready to spring if any sudden movement came from
the man. Almost worse, he saw the man's chest, if only a little, rise and
settle. James jerked back up and away from the man. He was alive. James’ brain
refused to accept the scene in front of him. How could he be alive?  James
moved closer to the man's upper body, his head facing the ceiling.

  James kneeled again, trying to get a better look at the
man in the darkened building. The man's eyes were clear, not clouded or murky
like he'd seen of the infected. He hadn't caught the virus. The man didn't move
his head, didn't turn his eyes towards James in a silent plea. Only pain
remained in the man and James hoped he didn't realized what happened to him. He
silently and quickly jammed the sword into the man's eye, trying to give him
the quickest death possible. He'd been through enough.

James cleared the rest of the building: a conference room,
a break room, a larger room for meetings and some small offices in the back of
the building. He finished clearing the bathroom, and stuffed some old clothes
he found into the crack at the bottom of the door, then turned the light on. James
didn't recognize himself. Blood and gore covered his body, from his neck down
to his pants. The fluorescent lights blared off him, making him seem almost
inhuman himself. He retreated from the sight but sucked in his breath and began
cleaning. Like so many times before, he forced everything out of his brain
except that needed for survival, and then did what needed doing. He needed to
get back to Kyle, he was all James had left.

An exhausted James peaked outside to make sure it was all
clear, the tension on the trip taking a toll on him. He tied the doors
together, walked back to where Kyle lay and checked on him. Still out. James
didn't know what to do for him, but he'd rest for a minute and see if he woke
up. James watched Kyle sleep, comforting himself that he'd just been knocked
out. James couldn't help but think of Yolanda when he saw Kyle, it was because
of both of them that he was here today, probably that he lived at all.

James had met Yolanda two years earlier, on a drug run from
Detroit, his home. He found in her all the things he'd been missing up North,
all those things a basic human being takes for granted, doesn't realized they
have until they’re gone. James never knew any different. He didn't choose his
life; his life chose him. That's how it was in inner city Detroit. Join a gang
or die, or that's how it had felt at the time, when his only parent, his mom,
died. He was thirteen and moved in with his grandma, who was too old to look
after him. He tried to be a good student like his mom had wanted, tried to do
the right thing but he wasn't given a choice, at school or on the streets.

After being jumped more than once, he'd been forced to join
a gang, just to be safe walking up the street. Never comfortable in the gang,
he grew in size and importance until none challenged him for anything. At six
foot four inches and a body of rippling muscles, it was his complete lack of
fear which caused others to back away from him, to fear him. His reputation
grew and with it,  along with his unease in the world in which he lived.

It all changed when he personally moved a truck full of
drugs down from Canada to South Carolina. It was a big pay day, but James had
taken the job just to get out of town. He took country roads back, stopping at
out of the way burger joints along the way. It was in one of these that he met
a little round, cornrowed woman who told him he'd made a mistake. James had
just ordered something from the menu, when the girl behind him unapologetically
told him to choose something else. James just stared at the girl, it had been a
long time since anyone spoke to him like that. The girl didn't seem to care,
and walked in front of him, actually changing his order for him. The girl
slapped him on the arm and got back in line.

The two had lunch together, then James decided to stay a
few days, to get to know her and avoid going home. He felt like he was in
another universe down there. Yolanda was like no one he'd ever met. She was
loud, opinionated, but also kind and carefree. More shocking than anything else
were her friends. James didn't consider his gang members friends, not really. But
Yolanda's friends were all friendly, laid back and mostly white. Reluctantly,
James said goodbye to Yolanda after a four day visit. He had to head home and
reassume the mantle he despised.

For six months, James kept in contact with Yolanda, using
secret phone calls when he could get away from everyone, and late night Skype
sessions. He didn't know if it was love, didn't know what love was, but he
respected her and he trusted her which, more than anything else, was enough. Trust
wasn't something he'd given out before, to anyone. Then she told him to just
move down there, to get away from that life. James had laughed at the idea of
just quitting one of the most notorious and deadly gangs in the city and moving
to a small town. She told him to be a man, then hung up on him. He moved the
next day, not saying a word to anyone or taking a thing. He had some money
saved and he just disappeared.

To call his surprise small, when he found out he'd be
staying with a white guy, would be like calling Moby Dick a guppy. Yolanda had
picked him up from the bus stop and drove him right to a suburban looking
house, with fresh grass planted in the yard. When Yolanda told him her plan, he
became incensed at the sheer gull of her. He wouldn't do it, couldn't do it. Again,
she told him to stop crying and be a man. More than anything else, when she
talked to him like that, he respected her and most times just thought it funny.
She knew who he was, what he was and it never curbed her tongue toward him.

"Do you trust me James?" she had asked, her eyes
not allowing his to break contact.

"I do," he answered simply, though it was not so
simple.

"And I trust Kyle," she said simply.

His decision was cut short when an average looking white
guy came out of the house, walked directly towards their car and opened
Yolanda's door.

"Hey Yolanda, and you must be James. I'm Kyle, glad to
have you here, come in, I made some chili," the guy said and walked back
in the house. James hadn't felt fear since he was young. He'd learned to shut
it out, to act without fear. But he felt it then, a different fear than normal,
something he wasn't familiar with; rejection.

His fear proved to be baseless. He spent the next week at
Kyle's house, saying little, not knowing what to say. Kyle also kept quiet,
being polite and social but not pushing for anything. James had heard the cries
of terror come from the white boys' room at night, the sorrow of his dreams,
and felt for the first time, they might have something in common. Often, the
two would meet in the kitchen in the dead of night, neither mentioning what
kept them up, but it was then they first started talking.

James stayed with Kyle for another two weeks, starting for
the first time to allow someone else in his life, learning what a real life was
like. Yolanda would come over every night when she and Kyle would finish work,
and they would have a BBQ and talk. James never told Kyle everything, but
enough for him to understand where he'd come from, the things he'd done. Kyle
never pushed or asked for more.

The next major change in his life came when one night while
having dinner with Kyle and Yolanda. She asked if he wanted to work with them,
to be security at a Nuclear power plant. James laughed openly at the idea of
him guarding anything, not to mention that he basically had no past. No
education, no former job, nothing really to put on paper. Kyle told him not to
worry about it, that'd he taken care of it, and he had. James never knew what
Kyle did, but he was pretty sure he'd created a work history and gotten a fake
diploma for him. He'd lied for him and trusted him to live up to it. They'd set
the interview up and before he knew it, he was in an eight week long class on
how to use firearms. James found a place, found a life and Kyle never said
another word about it.

Now, James watched Kyle sleeping, in a world crumbling. For
James, Yolanda dying had killed something inside him. She was more than he’d
ever told her, more than he was able to express. He thought she knew though,
and that gave him peace. Rage fueled him, that he wasn't able to protect her,
and he vowed that the only other person he trusted or cared about in this world
wouldn't die. He couldn't share feelings, couldn't really show them, but he
thought Kyle knew and that was enough.