Remedy Z: Solo Read Online Free PDF Page A

rifle came up again, but this time it wasn't to shoot. The heavy walnut stock impacted Skinny’s face and drove her upper and lower jaw inward with an awful cracking sound, as she pounced.
    With a hollow howl, she stumbled backward onto hands and knees and gave me enough time to draw my knife. Its heavy blade came down on the back its skull like a cleaver, splitting it in a number of directions. With that sort of brain trauma, she was gone. Blackbeard, on the other hand, was grasping at my well-travelled boots. He was trying to take the boots from me like I had done his friend. The Bowie was swung around into a stabbing position, a downward motion followed, from standing to kneeling. The extra supporting hand on the pommel gave me all the power and more to finish the job. “Stop…” he loosely groaned but it was too late. The knife entered just above his nose and took the top off his skull. He was done now too. “What the fuck?!” I was in disbelief. “A zombie that had retained some speech?!” I was incredulous and concerned that I had hallucinated due to hunger and dehydration. 
    Blackbeard had become a new enigma for me to understand. I wanted to know more. “Was he human?! He was probably in too bad a state after the shot, even if he was” I justified. What had happened was completely unexpected. That sort of stress, fear and uncertainty was never pleasant and it always rattled the strongest of people. The soul of a person is never intact after killing something that resembles the form of a human. This is even more the case when what you kill has a voice!
    Everything was questioned as a rattled mind raced. "Perhaps loneliness had reached such a point in me that I craved the company of a zombie and had imagined it?" A moment’s thought: "No fucking way. I was totally with-it and I had heard clearly. The bastard spoke!" 
    Now convinced that what I had heard was real, another noise attracted my attention. A gurgling and swishing sound from around the side of the house was telling and broke my moment of reflection. The threat may not have been over and further investigation and laser-like focus would be called upon, once more, before the day was done. Legs extended, a mind cleared and those legs stalked like a commando. Slow, purposeful actions were undertaken; a reloaded rifle with slow but strong movements, a steady silent movement to the scene of the unknown noise. As the reloading occurred, a casing was left to drop to the ground. I could worry about reloading bullets, cleaning this and that and everything else, later. There was a war on. I stalked, like when I was out hunting deer, around to the side of my cabin.
    A kangaroo, the gods only know how, had been mauled by the group. It laid there, its comparatively little arms scratching at its exposed chest and guts that had been spilled on the wet ground. Tail swinging this way and that and its one intact hind leg kicked, almost twitched.  Its mouth was mostly open in some strange expression as though it wanted to talk and seek my help. It knew I was different and was not one of the inhuman carnivores that had tried to eat it alive. The movement continued but was more subdued. I patted its head gently and it was not aggressive toward me. There was an understanding that one cannot explain. There was more in that understanding, in that poignant moment, than with the zombie that had spoken. On reflection, I used this as part of the basis to justify having killed Blackbeard; more connection with a mortally wounded roo. Without anything but compassion in my heart, I reloaded my rifle and put a round through its head. It was at peace. It was over.
    The mechanic’s jaw lay nearby in a pool of blood; somehow the roo must have kicked it off in the scuffle. “What the hell was going on?” This was unusual behaviour and I needed to understand what had just happened and what it really meant. The next 15 minutes was spent undertaking recon around my cabin to make sure I