In essence, Little Jim’s existence has its basis in stories told 2-3 years after the beginning of the infestation. Stories began to surface telling of a teenage boy, endowed with all the powers of a Host, but without all the psychotic craziness. In all of the stories, the boy appears during a Host attack and saves the day. Sometimes he kills the Host with his bare hands by ripping off heads or limbs, and other times he uses primitive weapons.
As far as I can tell, “Little Jim” is a myth, an urban legend, a story mother’s tell their children when they need encouragement or to help them sleep. “If you are ever lost remember that Little Jim is watching out for you.” Though I want to believe in this Superman, this Robin Hood, this savior, let me state again for the record, that in all my research, and my own experiences as a zombie killer, I have NEVER come across a Host who was even remotely concerned about anything but killing, death and complete destruction. If Little Jim is real, he is not human, nor Host, but something else.
Below are several of the better accounts that I have heard and recorded. – Norman Monk
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Story 1:
Travis Hartman pulled himself back up the trail after a run-in with a group of Host. He knew for sure that two of his seven team mates were dead, having watched as zombies ripped their heads off. He didn’t know about Griff Nelson who had been thrown into the brush within the first few seconds of the. Neither could he confirm the status of Tom Claret, who stood four feet from a huge axe-wielding zombie when Travis felt the bullet pass through the back of his thigh. Dana Justice, who stood next to Travis, managed to throw enough lead into the air to enable her escape, and the distraction allowed him to crawl into the bush with her. She helped him a hundred feet down the trail before reloading her gun and heading back to help the team.
He estimated he was three hundred yards from the fight, when he found a large rock, crawled out of sight to rest and assess his situation. He checked his gun, it was loaded, if there was a bright spot in all this it was the gun he had found while on patrol. Travis had no idea what the gun was until later that evening. Just last night, he remembered.
Tom told him the gun was not a rifle but was actually a shotgun, a semi-automatic shotgun called a Saiga 12gauge. “It’s built off of an AK frame,” Tom said, and Travis smiled and nodded as if he knew. Though nodding didn’t earn him extra testosterone points, it kept him from losing any. In the end, he deduced the gun he found was a 12-gauge shotgun that would shoot every time he pulled the trigger. He liked that 12 gauge shotgun shells were some of the easiest to find, and that he could load the magazine with 10 shells at a time. It was the perfect gun for zombie killing, and it made him feel safer than he had in the last two years.
Travis leaned the gun against the rock and pulled open his backpack. The first thing out was his medical kit. He looked at his leg and found, to his relief, the bullet had passed through the flesh of his outer thigh. The wound was clean and oozed very little blood. He opened several gauze pads, a tube of anti-biotic cream and a self-adhering patch.
After caring for the wound, he decided to take stock of the pack’s contents but no sooner had he done that when he heard someone coming up the trail, approaching with sounds he learned to associate with a Host. His leg stiff and throbbing, he tried to stand but was only half up when a huge obese woman rounded the rock and was on him.
Her face told him that she was Host, the edges of her mouth twisting up in a way only Host could make those muscles move. She grabbed him by the arm and easily swung him through the air in a trajectory that said she intended to smash him against one of the large rocks. Half way through the swing, however, his sleeve tore and he sailed away from the rocks and into the woods.
Travis grunted as he hit but still had sense to know that he needed to crawl away. The warm wet feeling on his thigh told him the wound had opened and he was bleeding again. He crawled as fast as he could but only made it six feet when the Host grabbed his leg and drug him back towards the rock. Apparently, she wanted to follow through with her smashing-him-against-the rock idea.
She lifted him up and shifted her weight to swing then stopped and dropped Travis on his head. He looked up and saw a thin teenage boy in a ripped t-shirt and filthy jeans remove a long knife from the back of the woman’s head. As she toppled over, he saw a large man in a torn and soiled business suit hefting an aluminum baseball bat, approaching the boy from behind. The business guy swung the shiny bat but the teen, faster than should have been possible, shifted his position, and dodged the bat while closing the distance between himself and the zombie. The zombie raised its bat for a second swing but the teen vaulted over the Host, sticking his knife into the front of the zombie’s neck and allowed his weight and trajectory to slice the neck in half. The Host’s head flopped to one side as it crumbled to the ground. The teen stuck a landing like an Olympic gymnast, then immediately sprang eight feet up into a nearby spruce and disappeared, apparently jumping from limb to limb.
Travis staunched the wound in his bleeding leg and headed away from the area. He met up with Griff Nelson about an hour later and together they headed to a safe area where Travis told his story.
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Story 2:
Jonathan Huff and his companion, June McGrath, sheltered inside a cave, high on the side of a steep hill in Kentucky’s Cumberland area. The last rays of the sun were disappearing, and the light was blocked by the brightly colored Fall canopy. Their heads jerked toward the mouth of the cave when they heard noises outside.
Crawling toward the mouth of the cave, their pistols drawn, they saw a group of two women and four children quietly walking below. Even in the dim light, it was obvious that though they all looked tired, the women were vigilant.
“Heading towards High Glenn,” Jonathan whispered.
“Or Pilgrim’s Keep,” June suggested.
Suddenly, brush rustled near the travelers as two Host bound quickly into the clearing. One immediately grabbed the woman leading the procession by the head, spun on its heal like someone winding up for a hammer toss, and threw her thirty feet in a ten foot arch that terminated against a large oak with a sickening wet slap.
As her body fell to the ground, the children screamed and scattered. The other woman- tall and athletic- sprinted from the rear, pulling a large Bowie knife from a sheath on her belt and a machete from the scabbard on her back. She took up a fighting stance as the two zombies approached.
Both Jonathan and June flipped the safeties off their pistols and prepared to fire, though at this distance they were not convinced they could do anything but draw attention to themselves. It was a moot point, however, because in the next minute, the sun dropped below the hills and the last remnants of light faded. The two could only make out vague movement below and decided it would be too dangerous to shoot so they lay there watching and listening.
A sharp scream from the fighting woman pierced the night, causing both watchers to jump, then roars of enraged Host erupted from below. There were several seconds of brush breaking and the rustling of leaves, then silence. After several more seconds they heard grunts and sounds of heavy things hitting the leaf littered forest floor, all the while the children whimpered in terror below the cave.
After a short time, no more than two minutes, Jonathon heard a woman’s voice calming the children, and then the movement of many feet along the trail away from the clearing. He and June held their places until morning, taking turns watching and listening at the cave’s mouth. In the morning, the two packed up and carefully climbed down to find the dead woman and two dead Host, their heads removed and lying beside the bodies. The neck wounds of the Host showed their heads had been ripped from their bodies. Later, after getting some distance from the scene, they discussed the strength and fighting prowess of the woman with the knives that had obviously been the winner, and wished that they could have seen the fight.
A day later, the couple made it to, High Glenn, a fortified safe camp and in the course of settling in, they came upon several children sitting around a woman who was cooking some type of stew, and they recognized her as the fighter below the cave.
“We saw your group come into the clearing,” June started, “but couldn’t get a clear shot without taking a chance of hitting you, sorry.”
The woman glanced up, smiled, then back to the stew.
“We saw the scene at first light, you seem to have done all right, we’re impressed.” Jonathon smiled.
The woman raised her eyes again as tears began to form. “I did nothing, I was dead, and these children were dead,” she said.
The oldest girl laid her hand on the woman’s knee.
“The zombie moved so fast that it caught my blade, not caring that it took his pinky finger off. It threw me down, and the other one was about to stomp on my head and…” The woman sobbed and caught her breath, “and then someone was there with me, a teenage boy. The kid was fast, faster than he should have been. He… well, I don’t know what he did because it happened fast, and I was scrambling away as fast as I could, but the next thing I knew those zombies were on the ground and he was gone.”
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Story 3:
Eight year old, William Grace- “Billy” to his older sister -wandered away from his family while they were hunting for supplies in a small burg outside Atlanta. The park across from the hardware store his parents were searching, invited him to swing. He liked to swing, though he seldom got a chance, and thought of getting his ten-year-old sister, Cecilia that they all called, “Cece,” but two steps later, he decided against it because she would probably rat him out. “Stupid girls,” he said as he walked across the street.
A quiet mewing came from beneath one of the dead cars sitting half on the curb. Billy bent to look beneath it and saw a small brown and white kitten deep in the shadow. He crouched, looking at the kitten, then grabbed a long thin twig from the curb and poked it toward the animal. The kitten raised a paw and batted at the stick, causing Billy to giggle.
Shifting his body for comfort, the boy scratched the stick along the road surface. The kitten stood, intrigued by the noise and the way the stick vibrated, and hopped after it. When it was within two feet, Billy took a small piece of jerky from his pocket and wiggled it. The cat initially showed disinterest, then something- the smell perhaps –caused it to take a sample lick. Soon it was chewing on the dry meat held it between Billy’s fingers.
“You wanna come home with me?” he asked the kitten.
The kitten was silent, it’s hunger in full control.
When Billy finally reached for the kitten, he was surprised that it allowed itself to be lifted. Bringing the young cat next to his chest, Billy levered himself up with his other arm, pulled in his knees, and began to stand. The dirty pair of unlaced boots standing beside him made him jump and the cat, sensing something was wrong, tried to escape by pushing against Billy, tiny claws extended.
The cat was small and Billy’s coat was tough so Billy stayed in control as he got to his feet, the cat still cradled against him. Billy’s eyes climbed the tall thin man in the Salt Life jersey and plaid boxers. Billy smiled at the man’s intense stare, until the man growled.
The kitten, maybe sensing the presence of another predator, or maybe just its impending doom, lost control and began clawing at Billy’s face. He let the cat go with a cry and it jumped from his arms but never hit the ground as the man’s hand whipped out and snatched the animal mid-jump. Billy stepped back and onto a glass bottle and the bottle rolled, causing him to fall backward. When he hit the ground, he screamed, watching the baby cat descend slowly toward the Host’s gaping maul, all the while clawing at the man’s hand.
Suddenly, an arrowhead and shaft sprouted from the Host’s open mouth and he dropped the kitten, which was so confused it ran to Billy and buried itself under a flap of his coat. The Host rocked forward, then its knees bent and it collapsed onto the sidewalk. Billy looked over the man’s fallen body and saw a teenage boy, holding a bow. The teen shifted his position and Billy could see a large quiver holding several arrows dangling from one shoulder. The quiver rocked as a small kitten- similar in coloration to the one now crawling on Billy’s arm- poked its head up and mewed.
The teen’s mouth tipped up in a one-sided smile. Billy raised his hand and was about to speak, when the teenager took two steps toward a tall chain-link gate, vaulted over it and into an alley.
“Billy,” he heard his father yell from across the street.
“William Frances Grace, come here now,” his mother’s panicked voice followed a second later.
Billy stepped from behind the car, the kitten now scrambling to a perch on his shoulder, and waved at his parents.
Good job. Interesting.