Necrocide

Chapter 65

Jonah and Kat were down at the DZI's new base in the remnants of Longridge. Ever since the White Scythe incident two days ago, the soldiers of Matheson converted the ghost town into a small military camp. A collection of military vehicles barricaded the roads off from any Deadmen possibly wandering into town. The ones that would bypass the barriers would be killed and hung from the traffic lights like criminals swaying on the gallows.

The town hall became their mess hall, where they kept the radio and where their food was served, and a rundown motel was quickly cleaned up and converted into their barracks. Ironically, part of the "clean-up" involved painting the doorway with Deadman blood to repel them, which didn't always work. The abandoned high school where the White Scythe massacre took place was off-limits both in respect to the fallen soldiers and because they didn't know what else could've been in there ready to attack.

In those two days, the DZI also gathered up a few mannequins to use as training dummies, even though they also brought a few dummies from Matheson. Kat was, as usual, able to prove how great her aim was, nailing every head shot. Jonah discovered his hidden talent in knife-throwing. Each blade he lobbed made contact with either the head of the dummy or the heart. Their fellow DZI soldiers Cassandra and Duncan, the same soldiers who discovered the headless corpse of ex-soldier Rupert Cromwell, were watching the whole time. "You've got some spot-on aim, lad," Duncan told Jonah. "Comes in handy if you've run out of bullets."

"Thanks," Jonah replied, not bothering to look back at his squad mate. He threw another knife and the blade landed right in the dummy's mouth.

"Damn, Jonah," Kat said. "The point is to kill the target, not leave him suffering with an open wound."

"It's not suffering," Cassandra chimed in. "Deadmen don't feel pain, remember?"

"That kinda makes it worse then. I mean how would you feel if you didn't know there was a knife lodged in your face?"

Cassandra shrugged. "Nothing. I wouldn't know it was lodged there. You said so yourself."

Jonah climbed over the small barricade that separated them from the training dummies to retrieve his knives. He yanked them out of their plastic flesh, jokingly apologizing to the dummy if it took longer than usual to pull one out. Once he had all his knives, he walked back to the others and left the building, which apparently used to be a martial arts studio before the Outbreak.

"Hey wait up!" Kat called out. She strapped her gun to her back and followed Jonah out.

"We going or what?" Duncan asked Cassandra. Both of them shrugged their shoulders as they pursued Kat to their new mess hall.

Jonah opened the door to the town hall and walked in. Multiple tables were positioned throughout the auditorium. There was a radio at the far end of the room, where the DZI would relay communications back to Matheson. Shaw and several higher-ranking officers surrounded the radio, studying the maps and guidebooks to occupy their time. Jonah parked at a nearby table where his backpack and cargo jacket laid, the same jacket with the words Endangered Species etched on the back.

"You going on break?" Kat asked.

Jonah didn't look back. He placed his knives down by his backpack along with his handgun. "Yeah," he replied. "Killing mannequins isn't as fun as the real thing. But in the meantime, you guys wanna see my collection?"

"You collect shit?" Duncan asked.

"Yeah, just a bunch of rubbish I found around Longridge," Jonah replied, still scrambling his hands around in his backpack. "Look here, bruv."

The first thing he pulled out was the head of a garden gnome. Just the head. "I decapitated a fucking lawn gnome!" he chuckled.

"You make it sound like there's nothing wrong with that," Cassandra replied.