Zombie Fallout: 'Til Death Do Us Part Part 26

Kong liked Tomas more than Eliza, but it was by only a matter of degrees. Like how one prefers a pit viper over a black mamba. "No. Horatio, the driver, was relieving himself when he got jumped."

"Bring him to me," Eliza said, seemingly bored with the proceedings.

Kong had been attempting to s.h.i.+eld Horatio. His ploy was only going to get him so far. "Eliza, my mistress, Horatio is a good driver and they're hard to find right now."

"I merely wish to ask him a question or two," Eliza replied.

Eliza was not that good of an actress. Kong knew the lie for what it was. He motioned for the men that had been caring for Horatio to bring him forward.

Horatio shuffled forward; he had never met Eliza, but he knew enough about her to be concerned. His eyes had already blackened and his jaw had puffed to nearly double its size giving him a cartoonish appearance.

Horatio had planned to stay strong, but one look at his employer and he had dropped his head.

Eliza reached out and grabbed his shattered jaw in her hand. Kong made as if to move and help the driver, then thought better of it as Eliza turned a questioning gaze on him. He wisely placed his hands down by his sides. Horatio was screaming in pain, as much as a man with a broken jaw can.

Tears rippled down his face and coated Eliza's hand, yet she did not yield her prize. "What did the man that did this to you look like?" she asked softly.

"Mmmfff..." Horatio sobbed.

"Mistress, he cannot speak." He almost added 'with your hand clamped over his face' but decided to leave that part to the wayside.

"Perhaps you should get a pen and paper," Tomas added.

Kong motioned for one of his men to get them. Eliza did not let go until the man returned some moments later. Horatio had to be held up as he nearly collapsed to his knees. His color took on the hue of old, yellowed parchment paper.

"Write quickly," Tomas prodded as Horatio tried to gather himself up and move past the majority of the pain.

'I'm sorry.' Horatio scribbled quickly, a child cresting on Red Bull would have written with less jitter.

Kong watched as the cold in Eliza's eyes turned to heat. "Description, Horatio. What did the man look like?" he asked his driver.

'Medium build....strong...shorts, tight s.h.i.+rt. Skin was pinkish like he'd been burned. Patchy facial hair, missing an eyebrow.' He wrote diligently. He pushed the pain a little further back. 'Tin foil hat.'

Tomas laughed at the last part.

"Something funny, brother?" Eliza asked.

"Michael Talbot is alive and apparently well, sister."

"HOW COULD HE KNOW?" she screamed. "He stops here and takes the most important truck...how could he know?"

"Do you still doubt divine intervention?" Tomas asked.

Kong had doubted his alliance with Eliza from the first day, and now, if the other side was the one G.o.d favored, he had chosen poorly.

"This changes nothing!" she raged.

"This changes everything," Tomas replied.

"Mistress?" Kong asked.

"I want the trucks ready to leave within the next three days," she said turning to walk off.

He would lose a good ten percent of his fleet due to maintenance issues if they left that soon, but he would not cross Eliza. "And what of Horatio?" No sooner had he asked the question than he wished that he could retract it. She would have forgotten if he had just left it alone. Tomas bowed his head for a fraction of a second.

Eliza spun back. "No truck, no need for a driver," she said as she again gripped his jaw.

She clenched her hand tight until Horatio's teeth started to pop from his mouth. The bones in his jaw liquefied as she ground them together. Horatio had long since pa.s.sed out as she made sure nothing structurally was left on the bottom part of his mouth. When she let go, he fell to the ground heavily. Kong had to turn away; the sight of Horatio's caved-in face was not something he would soon forget.

There was a widening circle around Eliza, Tomas, Kong, and the dying Horatio. Those that had been curious as to how it would all play out now wanted nothing to do with it.

"Do not fail me again," Eliza said to Kong.

He nodded.

Eliza and Tomas were heading back towards their car.

"The tinfoil is ingenious, don't you think?" Tomas asked, goading his sister.

"Why will he not die, Tomas? You know him better than I."

"I have known for a long time, sister, the man's importance in this battle. I cannot begin to understand G.o.d's design." For the first time, Tomas thought he saw doubt creep into Eliza.

"Do you know how it turns out?" she asked.

His heart ached. This was the closest to his 'Lizzie' he had seen in nearly five centuries, and still he thought she might be acting for his benefit.

"I am but a player in this game, Eliza."

"I am not a player," she said defiantly. "I make the rules."

"Then someone is changing the game."

"We'll see about that."

Tomas was not happy with the set of Eliza's jaw. She had something in mind, and it did not sit well with him. "Where are we going?" he asked as he started the car.

"Drive, I'll let you know when we have arrived."

"Eliza, it has been hours. Perhaps if you told me where we were going?" Tomas asked.

"I go to seek counsel. If Jehovah has broken covenant, then I will offer his counterpart the same transgression."

Tomas brought the car to a screeching halt. "What you do now is beyond reprehension, Eliza. But even you cannot think involving the Dark One would benefit anyone...least of all the person making the bargain."

"I merely wish to talk with the Fork-tongued One. No agreement will be struck."

"Eliza, no!" Tomas begged.

"Just drive, the sooner we get to New Orleans, the sooner I can go and kill Michael Talbot AGAIN!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.

Mike Journal Entry 10 "Rune stones, man!" John said as he jumped on the back.

"What?" I asked. I hadn't even seen the stones, and considering they were the size of a man, that was not easy to do. My eyes were transfixed on the green military boxes. I ran back to the cab of the truck and grabbed the crowbar I had seen resting under the seat. I can guarantee anyone that is reading this journal that they would have been hard pressed to find any kid in any country during any Christmas throughout the ages that was more excited to open a box than I was that day.

"M-240s and M-16s," I mumbled, possibly drooling on myself as I placed the crowbar in a slight opening.

It was too much to hope that the markings on the box matched the contents. John was a few feet away rubbing the rocks, he was muttering something. Azile was alternating between watching our backs and checking out the contents.

"Holy f.u.c.king s.h.i.+t," I said as the top popped free.

"What is that?" John asked, taking a second to look over.

"John, what I'm holding here is an M-240 machinegun. It'll shoot in the neighborhood of a hundred to two hundred rounds a minute without blinking and six-fifty a minute if I really want to put the pedal to the metal!" I answered as I hefted the twenty-five pound block of death metal out of the container.

"That's good then?" John asked.

"What?" I asked him incredulously. "Okay, let's put this in terms you'll understand. I feel about finding this like you would if this crate was full of prime California bud."

"There's weed in there?" John asked, pus.h.i.+ng me to the side. He was mighty disappointed when he realized that wasn't the case. "Why would you lie to me, man?" he asked with pleading eyes, like maybe I had stashed the find before telling him.

"I was just comparing how I feel about finding this to how you would feel finding some weed."

"Not cool, man." He returned to the Rune stones, I suppose for solace.

"Bullets?" Azile asked.

"s.h.i.+t," I said. I had been so enamored with the machinegun that I completely forgot about the rounds. Without them, this just became a very heavy club.

"There's a box next to him that says 5.56," Azile said, pointing to the left of John.

"No good, this takes 7.62. That'll work for the M-16s, though," I said, looking deeper into the truck. "This must be their rolling armory...and now it's ours. Well if this doesn't help to change the tide, I don't know what will." n.o.body was listening, but I was still talking. This was too big a find to keep bottled up inside. We now had a machinegun and about two dozen M-16s.

"Just use more of them," John replied in all seriousness.

"That'd kind of be like me telling you to just smoke more of the marijuana plant stalk," I told him.

"The plant stalk doesn't have any THC. You could smoke it all day long and not get high," he said. "I've tried."

"Same thing...sort of...with the bullets," I said as I pulled a tarp to the side. There were three more stones making a total of five and two beautiful crates marked 'disintegrating metallic split-linked belt (M13 links), 7.62 in a ratio of 3 rounds to 1 tracer.' "I think I'm going to need some time alone," I told John and Azile as I gently stroked the box. Azile laughed, which was nice, it was the first time I'd seen any emotion out of her, that didn't somehow revolve around anger. John started to walk out of the truck. "I was kidding, man," I told him.

"Wait! Are you sure those are rune stones?" I asked John.

"We should get going," Azile motioned.

"Sure, you can tell by the markings," he said as he ran his hand across the raised etchings.

Azile was getting down from the truck. "Hold on," I told her. She momentarily eyed the doors, maybe figuring if she could close and lock them before I could run to the end. She either figured she couldn't get it done, or that it wasn't such a good idea in the first place. "What part do you play in this?" I asked her point blank.

"I was a prisoner," she told me flatly.

"I gathered that much on my own," I told her. At first I just figured she was a plaything for a demented, perverted truck driver, but she didn't have the feel of 'victim' on her. "There's more here," I stated as I began to wonder. Her name which was unique began to stick in my head. "How do you spell your name?"

"What's that got to do with anything?" she shot back.

"Humor me."

"Is she going to tell jokes now?" John asked.

"Azile!" I snarled. John and Azile jumped.

"A-Z-I-L-E," she said as she put her head down.

I rocked on my feet, John thankfully caught me.

"What's the matter, man? That wasn't even funny." John asked as he propped me back up.

"There's more going on here than you're telling. You just happen to have the same name as Eliza only in reverse?" I asked.

"Whoa, that's freaky. Who's Eliza?" John asked.

"My father knew her," she said, looking back at me defiantly.

"Let's start at the beginning," I said.

"Well, scientists believe that the entire universe-"

"John! Her, not you," I said.

"That's just it, Ponch, the beginning is the same for all of us. That's what makes us all connected," he said proudly.

"My mother was five months pregnant with me when Eliza turned my father. According to my mother, my father visited her once in those last four months and told her that the only way she could protect me was to name me Azile. My mother was so petrified that she believed him completely. She said she had never seen someone so soulless...that was....until I was seven."

"Eliza," I said.

"She and my father came to visit. Eliza killed my mother as my father watched, then she grabbed me." Azile flipped her hair over to show two long-healed, puckered wounds on her neck. "She had just sunk her teeth into me when something in my father, some vestige of humanity showed itself and he begged her not to kill me...that I was even named after her. She backhanded my father so hard that he slid across the floor of the kitchen."