A few of the zombies saw Avery and Peter and veered in their direction. The father/son duo quickly ducked out an adjacent door, fleeing the rabid pack. With Avery in the lead and Peter close behind, they ran through a series of hallways. As they sped down the main artery of the prison, they came upon two of Orosco’s men unlocking a door. Before the men could react, Avery had shot each of them in the head.

     The key was still in the lock. Peter opened the door while Avery covered him. They were momentarily stunned by what they saw inside.  Tightly wrapped in cellophane and stacked neatly on palates were millions of U.S. dollars. In addition to the money, the room held an arsenal of guns and ammunition. They had lucked onto Orosco’s personal assets. Peter was awestruck by the staggering amount of hard cash, while Avery was more interested in the crates of Russian-made AK-47s. He hated Commies, but they sure made one hell of an assault rifle.

     Avery armed himself and his son. They each grabbed as many 30-round ammo clips as they could comfortably carry. Peter thought his father seemed to be enjoying himself. As they headed out of the room, sounds of gunfire and screams echoed from all directions.

     Avery led the assault. He and his son tore through the prison, blasting zombies and Orosco’s flunkies alike as they made their way to the main entrance. When they opened the front door, they discovered a new faction had joined the fray. In the main courtyard, Orosco’s men were involved in an intense fire-fight with guerilla soldiers that were flooding in from the darkened jungle. Avery and Peter had to find another way out if they didn’t want to get caught in the melee.

     Peter suggested they try the metal grate that dropped into the sewers. The two headed that way but found the route cut off by a horde of zombies literally feasting on the flesh of Orosco’s hapless henchmen. Avery and Peter started shooting. The machinegun fire and exploding heads must have gotten the attention of more zombies. A stream of undead soldiers flowed into the area. Soon the tide of zombies overwhelmed Avery and Peter. They had to abandon their position and fall back.

     The desperate retreat had Avery and son heading down a staircase to the basement. They came to a massive boiler room filled with out-of-date furnaces. For the time being they seemed to have shaken the unrelenting army of the damned. Stacked against the walls were thousands of kilo-sized packages of cocaine. They had stumbled upon Orosco’s other cache of assets. Avery searched the area for another way out. Peter bent down on one knee and tried to catch his breath.

     As Avery looked behind one of the out-of-service furnaces, he was blind-sided by Orosco. The drug lord tackled Avery, causing him to drop the assault rifle. Orosco grabbed the gun and aimed it at Avery. Peter jumped up and pointed his AK-47 at Orosco.

     “Drop it or your father will die,” screamed Orosco.

     “Don’t listen to him, Peter. He’ll kill me no matter what. Blow his head off,” Avery told his son.

     Peter wasn’t the warrior his father was. He saw that Orosco was jacked up and erratic, and the situation scared the crap out of the young man.

     Orosco made a threatening motion toward Avery. “I didn’t get where I am by being a nice guy,” he said to Peter. “This is not a game. You have three seconds to lay down your gun or you can say goodbye to papa.”

     As Peter bent over to lay down his gun, his father implored him again to shoot Orosco. The drug lord smiled as Peter set the gun on the floor. His grin turned evil as he aimed at Avery’s head. Orosco was so caught up in his own evil that he failed to notice the commotion behind him. Peter, however, was acutely aware of it. Orosco was taken by surprise and completely overwhelmed. Diablo, the newest convert to the ranks of the walking dead, grabbed Orosco and bit into his skull. The crunch sounded like an amplified bite into a firm apple. Orosco’s gun discharged, ripping the wall of packaged cocaine to shreds.

     Avery did a forward roll to avoid the scuffle. Diablo rammed Orosco into the crumbling wall of drugs. The kingpin tried to fight off the attack, but he was hopelessly overpowered. Diablo ripped into Orosco, slashing and tearing his flesh. The two fell onto the floor in a sea of white powder. Orosco’s screams soon became whimpers. His blood, mixed with the coke, made a sickly pink paste.

     Diablo tore Orosco apart with such brutality, that even the hardened combat veteran was shocked. Avery picked up his AK. He waited for the inhuman machine to reduce the drug dealer to a quivering pile of gore, and then fired a single 7.62 full-metal-jacket round into the back of Diablo’s head. The human robot had served well, but he was too dangerous not to kill. Avery turned to Peter.

     “I know what you’re going to say: I should have shot Orosco,” Peter apologized.  ”But he would have killed you. I saw the zombie coming up behind him. I thought it was our best chance.”

     “I was just going to say “nice job’.” Avery said, with an unfamiliar smile.

     Struggling with his emotions, Peter picked up his gun. He had to get something off his chest.

     “I’m really sorry I got us into this mess,” Peter said to his shoes because he couldn’t look his father in the eyes.

     “You bet your ass you’re sorry,” Avery shot back.

     Avery was so militarized that sometimes he forgot how to talk to people. He was used to ordering and breaking down other people. This time, though, he saw the emotional damage he was doing to Peter. Maybe he didn’t always have to be such a hard-ass. He could be a dad, too.

     “You made a mistake and I know you’ve learned something,” Avery said. He then smiled. “Besides, we finally found something we can do together.”

     Avery winked at his son. Peter knew this gesture was his father’s way of reconciling the years of conflict. It didn’t seem like much, but to Peter it was everything. They didn’t have long to revel in their newfound closeness. A thundering herd of zombies was coming down the stairs. Avery opened fire, but soon ran out of ammo. Peter was on his last clip as well.

     There was only one door out of the boiler room and that was crammed with violent remote-controlled lunatics. Avery jumped at their last option. He forced Peter into one of the long-defunct furnaces, and then he crawled in behind his son. Several of the zombies were reaching into the burn chamber. Avery helped Peter up into the chimney. Using his body as leverage, he inched his way upward. Avery just escaped the clutching hands as he got into the smokestack.

     Climbing up the flue loosened ancient soot. It was hard to breathe, and the black dust stung their eyes. Peter reached the top. He climbed out onto the roof of the prison, then helped his dad out of the chimney. They were three stories above the ground and had a good view of the mayhem below. Peter gave his last thirty-round ammunition clip to Avery.

     They looked over the ledge and watched the gun battle between Orosco’s men and the guerrillas. It appeared to be a stalemate, with neither side gaining any ground. Avery decided to turn the tide in the rebels’ favor. From his perch, he started picking off the drug traffickers. Orosco’s men panicked. Some left their cover and ran right into guerrilla fire. Others tried to retreat to the prison.

     When the fleeing men opened the front door, they unleashed a shockwave of zombie rage. The undead monsters annihilated Orosco’s men in a bloodbath. The guerrillas, thinking they had won, ran into the courtyard. The zombies and the rebels soon were tangled in a violent struggle. The unholy carnage continued unabated.

     “If we don’t make it, I want you to know I love you and I’m glad we finally got a chance to know each other, Peter said. “I don’t have any regrets.”

     Regrets. That was a word that jabbed at Avery like a rusty sword. While he felt good about the common ground they had forged, Peter wouldn’t really know him until he knew about Lausong—the event that had been haunting Avery for most of his life. He had held it in for too long. The time had come for him to speak of the unspeakable.

     Avery briefly told Peter about his experience during the war. He had been such a skilled combatant that he was given a unique duty. Along with several other Americans, Avery had joined a group of hardened Southeast Asian freedom fighters to form one of the first Special Ops units. It was the precursor to what was now know as the Special Forces. Their directive was to make covert strikes against the Japanese infrastructure. They bombed bridges, took out fuel depots, and sabotaged airfields.

     On one mission, Avery and his team had unexpectedly found a prison camp. A quick recon proved that many American soldiers were being held captive and possibly tortured. The camp, near the village of Lausong, was lightly guarded. Avery wanted to liberate it, but was denied authorization. It was hard for him to walk away from it, but he was a military man and he always followed orders.

     As the tide of the war turned in the Allies’ favor, Avery and his team were finally allowed to free the prisoners. The retreating Japanese set the camp on fire and booby-trapped the surrounding area. When the Special Ops unit finally got inside the fence, they found a horrific scene. Men, or what was left of them, were dying everywhere. The POWs had been starved, beaten, and broken.

     It wasn’t just that the soldiers had been tortured. Many of them were victims of bizarre medical experiments. Men whose bones had been removed were flopping around and begging for death. There were people with no faces. Body parts were growing in test tubes. Among the dead were soldiers who had had their arms and legs switched. Those who were still clinging to life died before they could be evacuated.

     The inhumanity Avery witnessed that day shocked him to the core. He’d never seen so much pain and anguish. It made it worse knowing that he could have stopped it if they’d raided the camp when it was first discovered. A hundred mothers never saw their sons again because Avery failed to act.

     Telling Peter about Lausong made Avery feel better. It was an emotional release. Peter, shaken by the appalling story, now understood the demons that had driven his father all his life.  He put his arm around Avery’s shoulders and told him that he shouldn’t blame himself. He hadn’t known what was going on at the camp and, if he had, he certainly would have disobeyed orders and done something about it. Telling the awful truth, and Peter’s mature response to it, changed Avery in the blink of an eye. He was free of his demons.  He no longer cared about the past. He was going to live in the present and look to the future. And right now, despite the chaos below them, he was with his son and that was all that mattered.

     While Avery and Peter continued to watch the battle unfold below them, they failed to notice that a zombie had climbed onto the roof with them. Avery was the first to sense the zombie’s presence, but it was too late. Just as he turned around, the zombie plowed into him and Peter. All three fell from the roof. Avery landed on the hood of a luxury sedan. He was momentarily stunned, but was otherwise all right. The zombie/guerrilla battle was raging all around him, but he was focused on his son.

     Peter had landed on the front steps. His eyes open but lifeless. Avery didn’t have to check his vital signs. He had the look that Avery knew all too well. Peter was dead. Avery felt a lump in his throat and his heart filled with sorrow. He swallowed the lump. His pupils constricted and every muscle in his body tensed.  Sorrow had quickly turned to hatred.

     Avery grabbed an assault rifle from the dead hands of a drug dealer. He turned and unleashed a hot lead barrage that saw both zombie and rebel splattered into nothingness. Heads were ripped open and blood painted every surface. Avery’s gun ran dry. Bullets were whizzing past him. He didn’t panic. He continued as if he were invincible. He found another gun and resumed sending his anger down the barrel at anything that moved.

     The zombies and Avery’s one-man onslaught were more than enough to drive off the few remaining guerrilla fighters. They retreated into the jungle. Avery ran out of ammo and couldn’t find any more guns with bullets. With grief-fueled strength and aggression, he moved among the zombies, bashing in their skulls using the butt of an AK-47. Layer upon layer of blood splashed over the warrior as he pounded the zombie horde.

     Holding it by the barrel, Avery swung the gun like a baseball bat. He bashed a zombie in the head and the heavy wooden stock of the rifle broke away. That zombie died, but there were more. Avery rammed the metal barrel through the back of another’s head. He now had no weapon at all. Undaunted, he hammered and battered with his bare hands. He cracked zombie skulls against the wall. He smashed them open on the cobblestone driveway.

     Avery knocked a zombie down, face first on the stairs. Before the undead machine could rise, he brought his boot down, splitting its head like a grapefruit. Avery was grabbed from behind. He spun around and forced his thumb and forefinger into his attacker’s eye sockets. With a violent thrust, he popped out the zombie’s eyes. The sightless sub-human wandered aimlessly, grabbing at the air. Avery took the penknife from his pocket and opened it. He stabbed No-eyes in the top of the head. With the blade deeply imbedded, the zombie fell.

     The sun began to rise. Avery realized he was the last one standing. The carnage from the slaughter was everywhere—bodies on top of bodies and pools of red. Avery stumbled over to Peter. He dropped to his knees in anguish. Avery looked to the heavens, hoping for a miracle, an answer, some guidance. But he knew that’s not how things work. Nothing came.

     That’s when the tears came. After a lifetime of holding it in, he couldn’t contain it anymore. As the pain streak down his face he realized he should have cried when his beloved Jean passed away. He should have cried as friend after friend was cut down in battle. He should have wept for the victims at Lausong.

     Avery picked up Peter’s lifeless body. He wanted to get him out of this forsaken place. He was heartsick. He’d seen many young men cut down before their time, but none of them was his son. This was different. Worse.

     “I can help,” Malvado said from behind Avery.

     Avery turned and saw Malvado standing at the front doorway. “Bring him to my lab. There isn’t much time.”

     When the war is over enemies often are completely sapped of their will to fight. Avery didn’t have any hatred left. A few hours earlier, he thought the surgeon’s work was blasphemous; now he was willing to do anything to get his son back. Avery carried Peter’s body to the lab and laid him on the operating table. Malvado started his pre-operation prep work. Avery had to leave. He couldn’t watch.

     A heavy rain was falling. Avery stood in the courtyard watching the blood wash away. He didn’t know if Malvado could bring Peter back from the dead. And if he could, what would Peter be?  A person?  A robot?

     A beat-up truck pulled into the courtyard. There were a half-dozen rebels in the back with weapons ranging from rifles to pitchforks. The driver got out and Avery recognized him as Raul, the man he had saved from being mugged in Puerto Sangria.

     Raul had a shotgun, which he lowered when he recognized Avery. Raul told him that the rebel forces had overthrown the oppressive regime. He said they’d come for Orosco and Malvado. Avery explained the gory tale of the previous night’s slaughter. Orosco was dead. He lied and said Malvado was too. Raul said the people needed proof that the tyrants were dead. He wanted their heads. Avery told Raul to wait while he went in to get them.

     As Raul and the rebels waited, they looked in amazement at the number of bodies scattered around the prison courtyard. After ten minutes, Avery emerged from the prison holding two heads. The one in his right hand was battered and cut, but clearly belonged to Paulo Orosco. The head in his left hand wore Malvado’s trademark glasses. Raul inspected the heads. He was satisfied. He took them from Avery and tossed them in the back of the truck.

     “El Matador es muerte,” cheered one of the guerrilla fighters.

     Raul thanked Avery, and then got back in the truck. Avery waited until they drove off before going back in the prison.

     “It was hard to stitch him up without my glasses,” said Malvado, sans eyewear, “but I think I did a pretty good job.”

     Malvado hit some buttons on a remote control. Peter got off the table and faced Avery. After a few more buttons, Peter saluted his dad. Avery looked into Peter’s eyes. It may have looked like his boy, but the dreams were missing. Malvado handed the remote to Avery.

     “You are the greatest warrior I have ever seen. Ever since our first encounter, I knew you were special,” praised Malvado.

     Avery was only half paying attention. He studied the incision on Peter’s head. The more he looked at him the less sadness he had. It wasn’t really Peter, but it was better than no Peter.

     “I want you to command my army. I want to tap your brilliant military mind,” continued Malvado.

     Malvado now had Avery’s full attention.

     “Think about it,” Malvado said with a devious smile. “You could have soldiers who know no fear. Who have a limitless threshold of pain. Men who follow orders to the letter. I want you to train my next-generation militia.”

     The offer appealed to Avery. It had always been his dream to command an elite fighting force. No quitters. No cry-babies. Just men who would fight till the death. There were conflicts all over the world and he’d been trying to get into mercenary work. It’s all he knew how to do. He wouldn’t have to go back to his boring civilian life and wait for the Reaper. He could charge head first into the Grim One with a brigade of perfect killing machines.

     Concerning Peter, all was not bad. He wasn’t lazy anymore. Avery could get him to do anything and he would always do a great job.