The Regulators - 02 by Michael Clary Page A

worry,” they wrote. “The General is real.”
    “He’s going to save everyone.”
    “He’s ten feet tall.”
    “The zombies are afraid of him.”
    “I’ve seen him; he drove by my house.”
    “I know his real name, but I’m not telling.
    “He’s just a legend. He isn’t real.”
    So many random thoughts kept scrolling along the page. At
first, I ignored them. I was only interested in having my many questions
answered, but the people just kept writing about him. They never stopped.
    Day in and day out, they never stopped.
    I began to wonder if such a man truly existed. I wondered
how he found the courage to stand up to these things and fight back. I mean,
I’m not a weak man by any means. I couldn’t even tell you how many fist fights
I’ve been in during my life. I don’t scare easily, but these things…these
things…they’re monsters.
    I read about his Safe Zone. I knew the location. Georgie’s
house was right in the middle. I wrote to Georgie, but with so many messages
scrolling by it was no surprise that he never responded.
    “ When did you first
realize that the General was Jaxon ?”
    When he and Dudley went and rescued that punk-ass Tito.
There was no lead up or warning. None of that shit. He was just suddenly there,
on the EPUA website, asking Georgie how to blow up a stove or some shit. I
recognized Georgie’s screen name. He hadn’t bothered to change it since
college.
    It took a bit, but I made the connection. The General was
rescuing Tito and blowing up a building in the process. Georgie’s house was
located inside the Safe Zone. Jaxon had to be the General. Who else knew both
Tito and Georgie and also had enough balls to do the kind of shit that he was
attempting.
    “ So your old college
pal was the General. What were you thinking ?”
    It was unbelievable. I mean, back in the day, Jax was more
interested in getting laid than being any kind of leader. I realize that other
people who met him later have different opinions, but many, many girls will
tell you the same thing. Back then, he was only interested in having a good
time.
    “ Why do you think
other people feel so differently ?”
    Probably because he’s so damn famous. I mean, don’t get me
wrong. He was undoubtedly highly intelligent. He outsmarted just about
everybody. He just tended to use his intelligence to play practical jokes and
to harass his friends.
    “ So you saw him mainly
as a pretty smart guy that liked to have fun and joke around ?”
    Yeah, but those were really my initial thoughts. I could
also see him as a fighter. That was another thing he got involved in on a
somewhat regular basis. It wasn’t in his personality to back down from a fight.
    He was also fiercely loyal to his friends. Their problems
were his problems. He wasn’t the type of guy to let his buddies down.
    I started remembering these things and everything slowly
started to click together. The guy I knew in college, my fraternity brother if
you must know, had all these gifts and personality traits even back then. They
were the same traits that would one day assist him in his role as a hero. Of
course he wasn’t making any beneficial use of his gifts and personality traits
back in those days, but they were there. They were just waiting for him to grow
up and become a leader. It’s those aspects of his personality that make him so
effective.
    Still, I was floored.
    I had to laugh at
that. I heard a roughly a similar story from Ivana. It’s nothing new, but it is
entertaining to hear people tell me what Jaxon was like before he became the
General .
    “ After all that you
just told me, why were you still floored ?”
    I guess it’s just weird to think that you know the guy
everybody was talking about. Hell I knew all of the Regulators. Jaxon, Georgie,
Tito and I all went to the same college. I knew Dudley since he was a kid and I
met Javie and Kingsley through Jaxon before I moved away. Jaxon and I kept up
with each other after I moved as well.