The Revenant Mutation

Chapter 9: Demands are a Privilege

The Capon of a Brigand group was the leader, and under the leadership of a Capon, Brigands became less of a group of bandits, to a group of coordinated and experienced terrorists in this post-apocalyptic world. They represented a type of order in the chaos, and under the command of Capons, powerful Brigand groups had appeared in the world. Some of which even held large territories and had hundreds of members.

The Black Ax Brigands were a small group of about 40 men, and their area of influence was in the River Basin area, which was two neighborhoods west of the location of King Moon Base. But due to the large population of zombies and monsters, it was highly difficult for humans to move around, so the Black Ax Brigands found it difficult to control a larger area due to their size. The heavy defense and patrols of King Moon also made the Base impenetrable for the Black Ax Brigands. So, they focused on raiding travelers and camps.

Richie studied the convoy, their heavy guns made him nervous, “But they have guns, we might not be able to handle their firepower.”

Olumide’s smile became bigger, as the right hand man of the leader of their brigand group, he knew that he couldn’t only suck up to his leader, but he had to also show his usefulness at all times.

“These guys must be from a large base Capon, but they can’t risk using those big guns in this area, remember the owner of this territory?”

The capon gave it a thought and nodded inwardly, “True. But they don’t know that.”

“If they dare make any ruckus here, we can quickly escape and leave them to face that monster alone.”

At this moment, the rich young boss said with a loud voice, “I am Alex Atolagbe, may I ask why you are blocking the road?”

The Capon replied in like, “I am Capon Richie…”

His group of brigands hollered and hailed him as he introduced himself, he had to gesture for them to stop their hailing.

“...you guys are passing through our territory, so naturally, you need to pay the passage f*e.”

“What the hell is the passage f*e?” Alex whispered to his adjutant in utter confusion.

The bald man in camo replied, “Some brigand groups will collect fees from travelers, those that don’t pay get robbed. For the most part, many would prefer to pay a little instead of losing it all.”

“But do we need to pay it as well, can’t they see our convoy?” Alex said in further confusion. He then looked towards the Black Axe Brigands ahead. “They don’t even have guns”

“The Black Axe Brigands don’t use guns, but they are notorious and not scared of fighting against overwhelming odds. We can’t underestimate them, young boss.”

‘I might not have much experience facing the outside world, but isn’t this just too ridiculous?’ Alex murmured to himself.

He faced the brigands again, “We are from Sobi Barracks chasing a monster, I don’t know if you happen to come across it.”

“What monster?”

“A guy, not much older than me. He is short and skinny with a proud punchable face, goes crazy when he sees blood”

Richie muttered to himself. ‘What’s this nonsense about being a monster?’

“We haven’t seen anyone like that”, Olumide replied.

“I guess we’ll be on our way then”, Alex said and turned around to leave.

“Did I say you could go?” Richie asked, his hand on the small ax on his waist.

Alex stopped in his tracks, he then turned around to face them. 

“We will search your convoy and take five percent from whatever we deem useful”, as Richie spoke, the ax men started spreading out, preparing to launch an attack.

Alex looked at them, “For a Capon, you should know how to read the air, or are you blind and can’t see our arsenal?”

“And so what? Can you shoot wantonly? Those undead fuckers will be on us in no time.”

Seeing that Richie wasn’t planning on backing down, Alex unsheathed his sword, “Good. But demands are a privilege of the strong, just saying it won’t make it yours.”

Richie laughed, “Young man, the kingdom of God suffereth violence and the violent taketh it by force. Do I dare take it? I dare!”

“Charge!” Olumide called and the axemen ran towards the convoy with loud warcries.

The soldiers pointed out their weapons but they didn’t fire, they were confused by the fearless charge of the axemen. 

“What should we do?” one of the men asked.

A bloodthirsty glint flashed through Alex’s eyes.

“Kill them all”

Gunshots drowned the war cry and bodies fell to the ground unmoving.

Alex rushed forward to meet the brigands halfway.

“Boss!” his adjutant shouted in shock. “Cease fire! Cease fire!” his adjutant screamed towards the soldiers, causing them to pause their shooting.

The brigands took the opportunity to close the distance between both sides.

Alex ran with his sword drawn like he didn’t fear being shot to death by his own men. Within a few seconds, he had crossed the distance between his team and the attacking axemen. His first victim died standing, Alex slid past the man like a ghost, leaving a thin red line across the man’s throat. He flicked his sword, crossing another couple of steps before he met his next opponent. 

The next axeman chopped down, Alex didn’t reduce his speed, his sword flashed upwards, catching the glint of the sun for a brief moment. The man screamed as the sword cut his wrist, he fell to his knees, clutching his own empty wrist in pain.

Three men were right behind the man but Alex didn’t stop, with a leap, he somersaulted over them and headed straight for Capon Richie and his right hand man.

“This kid is crazy”, Olumide said in disbelief.

Richie growled in exasperation. 

Alex cut down every single man that came close enough to enter the range of his sword, every swing of his sword nicked an artery or plucked an eye or severed a tendon or wrist. 

‘His swordsmanship is almost ethereal’, Richie thought.

“What is this? A martial art movie?! Why are you all just looking at him like that?!” Olumide shouted at the axemen that were starting to step away from Alex, some even decided to face off the soldiers instead of the sword wielding maniac.

“Swarm him, take him down! Flank him now!” Olumide commanded.

“I am coming Boss!” Alex’s adjutant shouted as he came running with a machete.

The symphony of steel cutting flesh and the feel of warm blood spraying in the cold air brought Alex a warmth he had missed. His form danced among the encirclement of axemen like a reaper, blood splashed across his face and soiled his luxurious silk clothing, screams and gunshots became his background music. In those moments, he couldn’t hear the world around him, he was immersed in the art of killing.

He slashed a man across the chest, causing the man to crumble. With a swirl of his foot, he stabbed, but before he could stab fully, he saw a familiar face at the end of his sword, it was his bald adjutant, Timothy. 

At the last moment, Alex withdrew his attack, but his sword still managed to stab Timothy’s bulletproof suit.

Sweat rolled down Timothy’s bald head.

An ax came flying from the side, causing Alex to move his head back, avoiding it just in the nick of time. They both looked towards the direction of the throw and saw Olumide charging towards them, Capon Richie followed close behind.

“I’ll take the Capon, you take his sidekick”

“Yes sir”

The duo ran to meet their opponents, Richie held two short axes, while Olumide had an ax and dagger. Timothy raised his machete while on the run and clashed with Olumide. Alex leapt over the two of them.

Olumide realized in shock. For Alex to jump over them so easily, it was not something a human could do normally. Only a ‘Blessed’ could achieve that.

Richie realized the same thing as he saw Alex drop from above like a war god. He didn't even have the time to think, he simply blocked. 

Clang!

Double axes clashed with a sword. Alex's strength pushed Richie back, further giving Alex's sword enough space to attack. With a sleek straight blade, his sword wasn’t suitable for slashes, so contending with Richie’s axes in very close quarters wasn’t advisable. But Richie knew this too, so he quickly tried to close the distance between them. He took a step forward, slashing backwards towards Alex’s throat with his right ax, but Alex pushed off his foot, sliding five meters backward like the ground lacked friction. The ax missed. 

Richie chased after him, bringing the axes down from two directions.

Alex smirked. He stopped himself with his left foot before pushing forward and entering into Richie’s space, due to the short distance between them, his left palm struck Richie’s chest even before the axes could land. 

Richie was sent flying several meters backwards, when he stopped, his breath had gotten unsteady and blood flowed down the corner of his lips. Before he could spit out the blood filling his mouth, Alex was already within arm’s reach.

‘Instantly’, instinctively, he raised his axes.

Clang! 

He staggered backwards, both to diffuse the strength of the attack and to gain distance, but Alex wasn’t ready to give him the space to catch his breath. He closed in on him again, this time with fast and precise stabs that aimed at his armpit, throat and other vulnerable spots on his body. Richie was forced to block with his axes while stepping back in hopes that Olumide would finish off Timothy fast enough to come lend him a hand.

Some meters away, an ax flew through the air and lodged itself into the neck of one of the soldiers shooting the mounted machine guns. The brigand responsible got on top of the armored vehicle, pushing the dead soldier off before turning the machine gun on the other soldiers.

After turning the gun in an arc to clear the soldiers, the brigand noticed Richie being pushed back by Alex not too far away. 

Alex stabbed towards Richie’s chest, but Richie blocked with his left ax, diverting the sword to the side before flinging his right ax towards Alex’s face.

Alex didn’t stop moving forward even though it brought him closer to the incoming ax, instead, he bent backwards. He watched as the ax passed above his face, his left hand came up from under, catching Richie’s left wrist, he turned while in motion, escaping by passing under Richie’s arm while keeping a vice grip on Richie’s wrist. With that seamless and swift move, he was now behind Richie, with Richie’s hand in his grip. He lifted his sword to cut off the brigand leader’s arm but his eyes caught sight of a machine gun pointing towards him. Richie noticed it in that split second too. With tacit understanding, both of them broke apart just before the machine gun opened fire on them both.

Richie leapt forward, rolling through the dust. Alex leapt backwards, landing and pushing off his feet to backflip through the air to dodge another round of bullets. The moment his feet touched the ground again he began running to the left, towards the armored vehicle in a wide arc, circling and reducing the distance between himself and the vehicle. 

Bang! Bang!!

The head of the mounted brigand exploded like a watermelon, he had focused too much on killing Alex, giving one of the other soldiers to take a shot at him.

The machine gun went dead.

“Roooaaarrr!”

A guttural roar shook the air, causing everyone to pause and look towards the abandoned supermarket on the right side of the road.

The supermarket’s sign was destroyed, but a big red S was laying on the ground close to where the sign originally was, the only intact part of the supermarket’s sign.

The supermarket has a spacious parking lot still filled with abandoned cars and shopping carts from when people raided it during the early period of the apocalypse.

Standing on one of the buildings in the supermarket was a large eight foot zombie, it was not too different from the one Victor had fought, but it was more of a mass of rippling muscle than flesh, and it was grotesque, with a gaping mouth on its abdomen filled with sharp teeth. 

Everyone stared in horror at the monster.

“Is that…” Timothy tried to speak but he couldn’t finish his words.

“What is a Terror doing here?” Alex asked, his tone was filled with more hatred than fear.

“Ah Ah, you guys think you can just shoot guns as you like? Let’s see you shoot this one now.” Richie said with laughter. Alex shot him a disdainful look, but before he could decide whether or not to attack and cut down the brigand leader, the zombie gave out another roar, one louder than the first. 

Richie snapped his fingers twice, his men withdrew from the scene like a tide, before the Sobi convoy could react, the brigands were already gone.

“Shit! The bastards knew an alpha zombie was here, they basically baited us to draw its attention, once it kills us all, they can come back to scavenge among our remains. Bastards!” Timothy cussed them out, but Alex was silent, he kept his eyes on the Terror.

“We need to get out of here sir”, one of the soldiers called out to them.

“Incoming!” another shouted.

From up the road, even from the direction they had been coming from, zombies began to rush towards their location. Zombies appeared from multiple streets, joining the growing tide with every passing moment. At this point, the alpha zombie leapt off the building and landed just outside the supermarket’s gate.

Alex felt tiny in front of its towering stature, his sword felt like a joke in his hand as he knew it would do nothing to hurt this monster. His past experiences only taught him two things about this type of zombie. 

Pain and Rage.

Seeing Alex’s maddened focus on the alpha zombie, Timothy ran to him and pulled him forcefully back towards the convoy, “We need to get out of here, you’ve already pushed yourself too far.”

The alpha zombie roared at them, and the mounted machine guns on the armored cars opened fire.

Alex was left no choice but to enter his car for protection as their team began a strategic retreat. No one in their right minds would fight against an alpha zombie. Especially a Terror.

But it was not ready to let them leave.