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A rough rough draft that I need to fix up a lot.

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            Clearly, I was the brains of this operation. My partner had almost gotten us killed twice. This was supposed to be a simple heist. In and out. But here we were, seven hostages held at the barrels of our guns. This was the last time I was working with a zombie.

            “What’s wrong with this air conditioning?” I muttered, my sweaty fingers pressing random buttons on what I assumed to be their thermostat. I couldn’t read these desert runes. Why they didn’t switch to the world wide language like the rest of the nations was beyond me. The desert race was too primitive for that. Primitive, right. “Zombie girl,” I called, backing away from the thermostat pad.

            They really could fix up this place a bit more with the money that they had. My office looked better than this, and I made a small fraction of what they did. Of course, that does go without saying since I am robbing them.

            The inside of the building seemed to directly reflect its surroundings. The walls were a sandy color, and the floor was covered in dirt. The only thing that hung on the walls was safety procedures: how to correctly put on your hard hat. A child could figure that out. But there it was with diagrams in their desert runes indicating the right direction. The bill goes in the front, who would have guessed?

            The Zombie stepped out from the back room where the safe stayed. Her sunken eyes stared at me in adoring curiosity. Disgusting. Her moldy hair clung to her face. Zombies did not have the ability to sweat. Whatever glued her hair to her bony face was as much as a mystery to me as the symbols on the thermostat. “Figure this out.” I pointed to it. This was my last time working in a desert too.

            I watched her as she studied the symbols on the thermostat. I read old literature on what the old races thought zombies to be. Brain-eating, brainless creatures whose vocabulary is limited to one word only: brains. While even I considered them to be thoughtless creatures, they were still more intelligent than the old races portrayed them as. They could strain together a sentence or two. The great parts about having one as a henchman was they could not feel pain, and they were easy to control.

            This zombie, Anna VonWert, was particularly easy to control. She needed a share of this money. Naturally, she was a do-good; a priestess who ran a school that was quickly falling into bankruptcy and destitution. She was orphaned as a child. Her parents killed in a war between zombies and the humans, a reason for the resentment that she held against me. She was now forty-seven, unmarried. She had control over the zombie’s flesh-eating habits. She hadn’t attacked a person in a little over a decade. Her blood type was AB positive.

            I never worked with anyone without doing proper research first.

            Walking into the back room, my eyes fell on the workers of the office. It was about as bland as the front room. Two desks sat near the back wall, the opened safe directly to the right. In the middle, our six hostages sat in a circle. Their sun-cracked faces looking down at their bound feet with their arms tied behind them. Inwardly, I smiled. I was proud of the Zombie for making sure that they could not run. Did they even dare to run? I ran my finger down the gun at my hip. No, they didn’t.

            The air conditioner finally kicked on, the cool air quickly drying the sweat on the back of my neck. Content, I draped myself across the arms of the single lounge chair in the room. I moved it in the bottom left corner for the Zombie so she could keep an eye on all things at once. It was angled slightly so all the hostages and the safe were in sight. She was ordered to shoot if one of them even made a move. It seems as if none of them had.

            “You should probably pick up more languages than the world-wide one,” the Zombie dared to apprehend me. “Since you do see yourself as a worldly gentleman.”

            “There is no need. I do not see myself coming back here any time soon.” I stretched my long legs. Our getaway vehicle should be here in an hour or so. Now that the air conditioning was on, the wait would be much more bearable.

            I glanced over at the Zombie. Her crater eyes were staring blankly at the wall across from her. Maybe they were brainless after all. Sighing, I looked over at the wall. It was adorned with two French paned windows. In between them sat a motivational poster with a cat hanging from a tree branch. I thought these things only existed in the old comedy movies. It goes to show how primitive these people actually are. “Why is that window open?” I asked quietly, sliding out of the chair and walking toward the window. It was slightly cracked open. I scoped the flat planes outside.

            “I figured it would help with the heat,” the Zombie whispered. Brainless. Nothing worth noting outside, I closed the window and locked it, wiping the countless fingerprints off the pane. Last thing I needed was for them to trace me with mine own.

            “It is completely stagnant outside. Opening the window was useless.” I clenched my hands down at my side. Stupid Zombie. I thought of the precious metals we now had in our grasp. It calmed my anger slightly. We were practically unstoppable. No, there was no need to lose my temper yet.

            Though, the police had not called to check on the hostages for a while. In past situations, the police were quite adamant about calling. I jumped out of the chair. “I need to make a call. Don’t hesitate to shoot.” I stepped out of the room squinting. The window was directly in front of me, the setting sun angling right towards my eyes. I turned to face the cheap wooden counter that stretched three-fourths of the width of the room, the phone lying on the far side.

            I picked up the receiver, dialing the number that I wrote on a small pad of paper during the first phone conversation with authorities. I pressed the black plastic against my ear, listening to the ringing. It rang six times without an answer. I slammed the receiver down. They tried my patience. They kept pushing for more and more time, and now? Now, they refused to even answer their phone.

            I glared at the door in front of me. Florescent lights shaped in the world’s language: open. Growling with anger, I jumped over the counter, drawing my gun, and breaking the lights. I was finished with their meddling. I was in charge. One dead hostage would change their mind.

            I pushed the door to the back room open. The Zombie was over by the window again. Once again, open. Definitely the last time I was working with a zombie. “Now you are letting the cold air out,” I chided as you would an infant pulling a cat’s tail. My eyes fell on the hostages. Five. Oh, how clever. How did I not see that before? “I suggest you close it.” She complied, stepping away from the window.

            “Why is your gun drawn?” she asked. Her black eyes studied the piece of bronzed metal in my hand. The revolver was over a thousand years old and made in Switzerland.  It had been in my family for so long. My father, my grandfather and his father took very good care of it. It was in perfect working condition. I drew the hammer back with a satisfying click. My brown eyes accented in the cold metal.

            “The authorities are not answering their phone,” I replied coldly. “So I thought I would take a hostage.” Six shots, and now there were six people. Perfect.

            “That was not part of the agreement, Charles.” I winced at the sound of my fake first name slopping out of her mouth. I never allowed my partners to know my real name. That was a little too risky. If they were caught, the police would simply show up at my house. My real persona was a well-known name. My practice and family depended on me not being caught.

            Looking down the 160 mm barrel, I fired at the closest hostage. The bullet cleanly entered the center of his forehead. He fell back into the center of the circle. The others’ block mouths opened in loud screams.

            Light ringing could barely be heard over the distressed cries of the hostages. Now they wanted to talk to me? I took a step towards the sound of the ringing phone. The sound of an opening window echoed through my mind. Desperately, I wanted to speak with the police about my triumph, but I could not afford to lose another hostage at the hands of that Zombie.

            “Zombie girl.” I raised my voice, so I could be heard over the wails. “Go speak with the police. Take a break from this babysitting duty.” It was hard to sound sweet when your voice was a few decibels away from screaming. Her eyes flickered at the screaming desert people before she went to answer the phone.

            The Zombie had not spoken with the police during the duration of the heist. Was she planning this from the start? Perhaps my research was not thorough enough. I knew the bounty for my head was not nearly enough to even compare with the share that she would have been given. Maybe she was promised even more money.

            I ran my hand through my dark hair, now greasy from the amounts of sweat during the beginning of the heist. My eyes fell on the bags of copper resting outside of the safe. Perhaps while the police were distracted with her telling of the story, I could escape. With the flat planes of the desert, it would be reckless. About as reckless as working with a zombie, perhaps.

            The Zombie was not about to get away with her betrayal. After her death, I would make a run for it. I had already broken my arrangement. There would be no getaway car for me in the end. The other hostages would be spared of course. They were least likely to come in here shooting wildly if they were still alive. I would also have more bullets for my escape.

            “They wish to speak with you,” the Zombie mumbled as she entered the room. When did it get so quiet?

            “Anna,” I said quietly. The sound of her name on my tongue felt weird like it slimed out of my mouth. “Why?”

            “They say you are the boss…and the murderer. They’d prefer to keep you under control when you are the bloodthirsty one.” She glared at me ineffectively. With her sunken eyes, she just looked like an overly depressed ghost. I had seen quite a few of those at the clinic.

            “That was not what I was talking about.” I raised my gun, the sights centered on her forehead. The air conditioning rumbled on mixing with the heavy breathing of the room creating a neat little soundtrack for the stand-off. “How much were you offered?” She shook her head, refusing to answer my question. “Very well.” A sharp clap filled the room. This time there were no screams or wails. The soft thud of her body hit the floor as the hostages sat cemented to the floor. “You must damage the head to kill the zombie,” I recalled the old stories.

            I slipped the gun into my holster. Only four bullets left. My boots clicked softly on the wooden floor as I approached the brown sacks with the precious metal inside. I hoisted them up on my shoulder, as I often saw in those old Westerns.

            I had never killed a person before, man or woman. Now my soul was stained with the iron smell of their blood. Not long ago, when I was cleaning the revolver at my hip, I thought about whether or not I could actually go through with it; killing. Now I knew that I was not only able to kill, but I could do it without hesitation.

            I did not have the proper time to reflect what this meant to me or to my humanity. I would take care of that as soon as I was safe within my home. Through example of Freud, I knew it was harmful to try and analyze yourself. Most of the people in my field went crazy because of it. I would not be caught dead amongst their ranks.

            As I opened the window to escape, the ringing phone echoed through the office, beckoning me back inside. A smirk fell on my lips, recalling every bad joke that robbers and bad guys made in the old media. “Sorry, we’re closed.” I slipped into the dawning desert.

Reviews

[∠( ᐛ 」..]

interesting story =-O
rating 100/100

[Wolfwind]

I liked this. Zombies with a twist of humor is always a good read. I really liked how the main character is rather blunt with a touch of sarcasm, it works well. Much enjoyed!

Aaron