Free Jigsaw World by JD Lovil Page A

and a machete that he had
found in the RV. George had a two pound sledgehammer, and Sidney
had a Katana and now Tom saw that he was in possession of a nice
silver toned Colt Anaconda 44 caliber revolver with a long eight
inch barrel. Charla had her good looks, which would buy her more
protection than any weapon would.
    Just as the Dead were about to strike, a shot
rang out, and the lead Deader fell. Sidney opened up with his own
pistol, and Tom and George each felled one of the Deaders. Bailey
stayed back to guard the Queen, and to direct the
battle.
    Thirty seconds later, the last of the group of
Deaders were down. A man came out from his vantage behind a large
headstone, and approached. The group examined him as he approached,
but could find no evidence of him being a member of the Deader
community. He had assisted with putting down the Deaders, and he
wasn’t graveyard messy, so he passed first muster.
    When he reached the group, he extended his
hand, and George shook it. “Hello. I am Markus.” The man said. “I
suggest that we get out of here, before the bodies get back
up.”
    Tom looked at the bodies, and noticed that
each of them were the source of a softly luminescent fog. In the
case of one body, Tom had used the machete to sever the head from
the body. The fog from that body extended to the head, which seemed
to be dissolving into the fog.
    “ Okay then.” Tom said. “I formally
offer you a ride on my RV down to a less dangerous situation. Do
you know where we can gas up in town, before we go?”
    “ I know just the place.” Markus
smiled. “Let’s move.”
    A few moments later, the group had boarded the
RV, and it was bouncing down the slightly ill-kept road. Markus
directed Tom to take the left side turn-off, and after a few
hundred feet, the group had arrived at a small two pump gas
station. No one was around, but a brick and a short search yielded
the necessary means to activate the pumps and lift the cash out of
the register.
    In short order, the RV was gassed up, and the
crew was ready to depart this Dead infested town. As they pulled
out onto the interstate, Sidney drove the RV, and the rest of the
group settled down around the table to interrogate their new friend
Markus. Tom took the opportunity to get right to the
point.
    “ Markus, why don’t you tell us
whatever you know about what took place back there?” He queried.
“You are the only living person we saw in town, although we didn’t
do much of a search. How did you survive?”
    “ Well, I woke up this morning in
this body.” Markus reported, as he raised his hand to indicate to
which body he was referring. “I went to sleep very much in
different circumstances.”
    Markus went on to recount the events of the
last day. He said that he woke up in the body of a person named
Mike, who by the evidence of a suicide note and a bottle of
tranquilizers was contemplating suicide. For whatever reason, what
he got instead was an unanticipated resident in his
body.
    Markus believed that Mike was still in the
body with him, because he could access all of Mike’s memories, and
there was a sense of someone else being there, but totally passive.
Markus had also noticed some small habitual type details that he
was doing now, that he had never done before.
    During the time that Markus had been exploring
the situation today, he had encountered two other people with the
same situation as his own, and had met a few still alive normal
people. All had gone their own ways, and the Deaders had been very
active, trying to catch and kill them all.
    Markus had caught and to some extent
interrogated one of the other types, the Deaders, and had formed
some preliminary theories on what was happening in the wonderful
town of Mildew. The dead bodies that had been resurrected were
being animated by things that claimed that they were spirits,
trapped in a tormenting place. They didn’t know if it was some type
of hell, or if all the dead go there, or why they were