Cayo Elina 20

‘Shamblers, how bad can this be?’ Gus thought to himself. The bar was clearing out, most of the people were heading into the hotel or towards the open air portion of the bar to make their escape through the alley. ‘First thing’s first.’ Gus swung the machete around and took of the top of the one armed zombie’s head.

“No!” screamed the middle aged zombie woman. She launched herself at Gus, taking him by surprise and knocking him to the floor. She wasn’t trying to bite him, but punched him repeatedly in the face, yelling incoherently the entire time. Gus shoved her away while she was pulling back to make another roundhouse punch. She landed on one of the heavy tables and rolled off the top to collapse on top of the chairs on the other side.

Gus climbed to his feet and looked about for his machete, he still held the club in his right hand, but had lost the blade in the scuffle. Bending he narrowly missed being bitten by the one armed zombie.

“Son of a bitch!” Gus jumped back, the zed was a no-brainer, still squirming even after his head had been severely damaged. ‘You don’t see that every day.’ The truth was Gus had only seen it a half dozen times, once with a super zombie, the others had all been shamblers.

Bending over Gus thrust his club through the top of the thing’s skull as if he were plunging out a clogged toilet; the zombie dropped as if pole axed. Turning his attention to the doors Gus saw that the zombies were in. At the beach door Hector was struggling with a rotted out husk of a young man and he looked like he was losing. Hector’s eyes met Gus’s for an instant before Gus broke contact and took a quick dive into the future. Time, for Gus, stopped.

‘One of the misconceptions people have about my power is that I can’t go looking ahead at will. People think it happens randomly and that I can’t go looking for specific things.’The danger was that he would spend too long looking for ways to make things come out right and that did take time. While his scope of vision could encompass the next hour almost instantly, but looking further than that would cause him to freeze up and appear to be catatonic. ‘Of course, that does happen involuntarily at times too.’ The future was an addicting, fascinating place and Gus knew he could easily get lost there if he wasn’t careful.

A smile reached his face as he pulled back into the bar, no more than a millisecond had gone by and he had what he needed to know. In a fight it was most important that he not plan for more than a few second ahead, a delay longer than that would mostly likely end up being fatal.

Gus pushed himself sideways and avoided the middle aged zombie as she lunged for him. He kicked a heavy chair after her with enough force to break it both where he kicked it and where it hit her in the back of the head. She slumped down and Gus was fairly certain she was gone. At the doors Hector screamed in frustration as two zombies flanked him and grabbed at his arms.

Max fired a coach gun at head level towards the Ocean Court doorway, his shot was good. Four zombies went down and Gus thought two of them wouldn’t be getting back up again. He ran and jumped towards Hector, knocking away one of the two biters with his feet while he clubbed the rotted youth away. Hector was able to grab the remaining zed by one arm and swing it heavily into the side of the doorway, crushing its skull like an eggshell.

‘Eggs. Mmm.’ Gus thought, immediately followed by ‘Don’t get distracted!’ He clubbed the rotted zombie again, just to be sure and then took down the other slow zombie as it tried to rise. Hector bent over and retrieved his revolver, which Gus hadn’t even seen him lose.

“That thing work?” Gus asked him.

“Better than a shit-gun.”

Gus laughed, Max had told him that the locals sometimes cobbled together short pieces of pipe with a single bullet to use as a last defense. Unfortunately they were wildly inaccurate and were only marginally better than…shit.

Hector proved that the gun fired by aiming it at the next zombie coming through the door. This one had been a man in his twenties and was wearing a filthy Hawaiian shirt and no pants. Unfortunately Hector’s shot missed and took a chunk out of the door frame.

Gus frowned as Hector cursed and fired again. Hawaii went down in spray of mottled brain and bone shards.

“Better. How many shots do you have?” Gus asked.

“It only holds five. I got three more.”

“Shoot more carefully.” Gus told him as he bent over heave a table onto its side.

Hectors shots rang out in slow, steady succession and Max’s shot gun bellowed one more time. Gus hefted the table in front of the open doorway to form a makeshift barricade that Hector pushed his back up against to hold in place.

Both men looked towards the Ocean Court door at the zombie coming in there. “Can you hold them here?” Gus asked.

The table heaved violently behind him. Hector struggled to get the barricade back in place, taking care to use the table legs to maneuver the heavy piece of furniture and keeping his hands well away from the edges.

“I got it.” Hector assured him.

Gus paused for a moment, looking to see if the kid could hold it for long. His pause was enough to plot out a course of action on the other side of the room and he nodded to Hector as he ran back to where his machete lay on the ground.

Scooping it up he charged into the leading zombie, which was almost to the bar, taking its head off as he ran by. Gus was in among the mob then, slashing and thrusting with the machete, not aiming for killing blows, but for those that would incapacitate as many of the foes as possible.

‘That’s a rookie mistake’Gus thought, ‘Trying to make every shot put a zed back into the grave. Taking off a leg is usually more effect at immobilizing them and easier to do.’ Gus swiped a leg off of an old grandfather right below the knee, ‘It doesn’t even have to be the femur, when a shin will do.’ The old zed fell over sideways, arms still reaching slowly for Gus.

Five of the zombies were down, with only one destroyed permanently. There were easily fifteen more inside now and Hector was cursing loudly as he held the door on his side. Max had his shotgun reloaded and was aiming it towards the crowd of zombies.

“No! Help Hector!” Gus yelled.

Reaching below the counter Max brought out a box of shotgun shells before vaulting the bar and running to Hector’s aid.

Twirling Gus cleared out two of the zombies closest to him and paused to look at the oncoming crowd head on. Touching his chin to his chest he looked through slitted eyes at his foes, pausing just a microsecond to plot the best course of action. He burst into speed just as Max’s shotgun went off at the other door, Hector jumped at the loud noise, but was enthralled with Gus, going so far as to tug on Max’s sleeve and point as the little man plowed through the ranks of zombies like a scythe through wheat.

“He’s…he’s…”

“Yeah, a better bouncer than the Corona’s ever were. Can you see your gang standing up under this?” Max commented. “Glad I hired him.” Reloading, Max pushed his gun over the barricade and let loose his shot at point blank into a zombie child’s head.

“I hate the little fuckers.”

Hector grunted.

“I mean what are you going to do? Let them run around eating everyone in sight? You gotta put them down too.”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

Hector mumbled something Max didn’t hear over the sound of gunfire coming from the street.

“What?”

“Little, big, the only good zed is a dead zed.”

“That’s half my clientele you’re talking about!”

“Sorry.”

“If you’re going to hang with us, you better adjust your attitude.”

Hector looked at Max and narrowed his eyes

The gunshots were growing close and the pressure against the table lessened to the point where both men looked over the top to see who their savior was.

“Shit. There goes the neighborhood.” Max said.

Hector tugged on Max’s sleeve and pointed at Gus, “What’s he up to?”

Gus had disabled all the zombies inside the bar and was going from body to body chopping off heads.

“He’s not killing them, just taking their heads off. Why?” Hector asked.

Shrugging Max said, “Dunno. Maybe he respects my business principals enough not to reduce my clientele.”

Gus was grabbing the heads by the hair and tossing them out into the street. The gunfire from outside abated and a group of men in uniform marched up to the Ocean Court doorway. Gus tossed the last of the heads out to one side and stood before the men in front of him.

Max saw the look of surprise on Gus’s face, but didn’t know why.

‘The nice part about seeing the future my way is that I can still be surprised.’ Gus thought, there were five men in front of him, armed with single shot rifles that  looked like better variants of the ‘Miami Specials’. The surprise was that one of the men in front of him was Ramon.