Turbulent: A Post Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller (Days of Want Series Book 1)

by T. L. Payne

  The girl stomped on Kelly’s foot. He bent over, hitting his mouth on her shoulder. He hopped on one foot as he tried to maintain his hold on her while keeping his hand over her mouth.

  Carl leaned in close to her ear.

  “Listen up, girl. You better calm down and be nice or we might just have to hurt the old lady and that little girl.”

  The girl’s eyes widened, then filled with tears. She stopped struggling in Kelly’s grip.

  “That’s better. You be good and nobody is going to get hurt here today. Got that?”

  The girl nodded.

  “Let’s go, Kelly.”

  Carl opened the door, and Kelly pushed the girl forward while still maintaining his grip on her mouth. Just as Carl turned to go out the door, he heard a shot gun rack. Carl swung around. Kelly released the girl and turned. It happened in slow motion.

  Kelly threw his hands up and the pistol in his right hand clattered to the floor. The girl dropped to a crouch as the boom of the shotgun shattered the kitchen window to the right of Carl. Carl ducked down and fired, hitting the woman. He continued to fire as she fell to the floor. Her shot gun clattering to the floor.

  Kelly stumbled back and pressed himself against the wall, his eyes never leaving the bleeding woman. The girl screamed and tried to go to the woman, but Carl caught her by her hair. He yanked her back toward him, causing her to lose her balance and fall to the floor. He pressed the pistol hard against her head.

  “Kelly, grab that shotgun,” Carl yelled.

  “Who else is here? Anyone else gonna come try to shoot me this morning?”

  “No. It is just us,” Maddie said.

  “You best be telling me the truth, girly. As you can see, I ain’t in a playing mood. I don’t appreciate some old bag shooting at me before I even had my breakfast.”

  “What do you want? I don’t have any money, and I don’t think they have any either, but—”

  “Where’s the money at?”

  “I don’t know where she keeps her purse.”

  “Kelly,” Carl yelled at his brother. “Kelly!”

  Kelly stared at the woman on the floor, then back to Carl, his expression blank.

  “Snap the fuck out of it. We have work to do, bro. Pick up the shotty and go search the place. Find me the woman’s bag. I imagine that is where we’ll find her cash.”

  Kelly looked back down at the woman, then at the door she had come through but did not move.

  “Move it, Kelly! Move your fucking ass!” Carl yelled, spittle flying from his lips.

  Kelly crept around the dying woman’s body. He stopped and looked down at her. He slowly reached down and picked up the shot gun. He stared at the blood-spattered gun.

  “I’m sorry,” Kelly said, and darted out of the kitchen and down a hall.

  Carl dragged Maddie over to a stool by the kitchen island and pushed her down onto it.

  “Sit there and be good. As soon as we grab the money, we will get out of here.”

  “Yes, just take the money and go,” she said, brushing hair from her face.

  “Oh, we will, but you are coming with us. We have someone we would like you to meet. It’s your lucky day. He is gonna give you a job.”

  “No, I’m not going. You can kill me—”

  Carl reached out and slapped her hard across the face.

  She reached up with her left hand and covered the red mark on her face. She glared back at Carl, her hazel eyes blazing into him.

  “I ain’t going nowhere with you freaks.”

  Carl yanked her to the floor by her hair and put his foot on her neck. He pressed the muzzle of the pistol to her forehead.

  “Do it. Just do it now. You will have to kill me, cause I ain’t leaving here with you.”

  “Kelly, get the fuck in here,” Carl yelled, pressing the pistol harder against her head.

  Kelly ran into the room and stopped at the body of the woman.

  “Get the fuck over here, you pussy. Help me tie this bitch up before I have to blow her fucking brains out. Mouthy-ass bitch is pissing me off,” Carl said, the veins in his forehead popping as his face turned deep red.

  Kelly stepped over the woman and retrieved a bag of zip ties from his back pocket. Carl grabbed the girl by her hair, shoving the pistol into her abdomen.

  “I hear being gut shot hurts like a motherfucker. How about I shoot you and let you bleed out like your momma over there?” Carl said, as he spun her around backwards on the stool.

  She did not resist. Kelly grabbed the girl’s wrist, wrapped the zip ties around them and pulling them tight.

  “Get her feet too.”

  Kelly did as instructed and zip-tied her feet together. They left her on her stomach in the kitchen as the two ransacked the house. Carl heard the motor of the four-wheeler through the open front bedroom window and ran to tell Kelly.

  Carl ran from the woman’s bedroom just in time to see the boy barreling down the drive, the shotgun across his lap.

  “Go shut the back door. When he opens it, we’ll shoot him,” Carl said, pointing toward the back.

  “Fuck no, I ain’t shooting no boy. There weren’t supposed to be no shooting. This is fucked up. I did not sign up for this shit.”

  Kelly paced the room back and forth waving his arms over his head.

  “All right, you little whiny baby. We won’t shoot the boy. We’ll just invite him to have a seat next to his dead momma.”

  “I ain’t hurting no kid. And neither are you. We tie him up like the girl there. Ain’t no need to hurt him. We just leave him here and take the girl. No one else needs to get hurt. You hear me, Carl?”

  “You are starting to really piss me off, brother, but all right then. You grab the kid and tie him up, and we’ll leave him like you said. If it goes sideways and I have to shoot him, it is on you,” Carl said, pointing a finger at his brother.

  Kelly shook his head and ran toward the kitchen. He sidestepped the body on the floor and quietly shut the back door just as he heard the engine of the four-wheeler die.

  Carl tapped his thigh with his fingertips as they waited for the boy to open the door. They heard him coming. He was whistling some tune Carl did not recognize. He motioned for Kelly to stand beside the door while he ducked into the breakfast nook out of sight of the door.

  When the door opened, the boy immediately froze. Instead of running to his mother’s side, as Carl expected he would do, the boy turned and started down the steps. He was half way back to the ATV when Carl leveled his pistol and shot him in the back.

  “Fuck, Carl, what did you do?” Kelly said, pounding his fists against the counter and kicking over a trash can.

  “He would have ran next door and brought back a bunch of cousins and shit. I could not risk that. You want to get shot in the back by some camo wearing bubba while we try to get to our wheeler with the girl?”

  “I don't know why I let you talk me into this shit,” Kelly said, crouching to the floor and putting his head between his knees.

  “I said I don’t want to be a part of no killing, and you go and shoot a kid in the fucking back.”

  “We ain’t got time to stand around here arguing about it now. We gotta get the hell out of here before someone comes looking to see what the shooting was all about.”

  Carl shoved Kelly toward the open door.

  “Now you go get the boy’s wheeler and bring it up here. We’ll throw the girl in it and get the hell out of here.”

  Before descending the steps, Kelly looked over his shoulder at the girl.

  A moment later, Kelly pulled the four-wheeler up the steps and parked it, motor running. Grabbing the girl by her arms, Carl motioned for Kelly to grab her feet and help him carry her down the steps. As she struggled in their grasp, her head banged against the door frame causing her to cry out.

  “Damn it, Kelly. Be careful. Boss ain’t gonna pay top dollar for her all banged up. It is bad enough she has that scrape on her cheek and a fat lip.”

 
“Sorry.”

  Once out the door, the girl began to scream at the top of her lungs. Carl put a hand over her mouth as they shoved her down hard onto the trailer.

  “Get me something to stuff in her mouth. We need to shut this bitch up before someone hears her.”

  After running into the house, Kelly returned with a hand full of dishtowels. Carl stuffed one towel in the girl’s mouth. After tying two towels together, he tied the towels around her head to hold the gag in place.

  “Jump in and I’ll drop you off at our wheeler,” Carl said, pointing to the trailer.

  Kelly jumped in, bumping into the girl as Carl floored it away from the house, throwing gravel behind them.

  Chapter 23

  Minooka, Illinois

  Event, + 2 days

  Maddie squirmed and tried to roll onto her back but there wasn’t sufficient room with the man nearly sitting on top of her. The plastic zip ties cut into her wrists as she struggled to roll over. She wiggled and rubbed her face on her shoulder attempting to dislodge the dishtowel tied around her head holding the gag in place.

  By the sound of gravel under the tires, she could tell they were on the I&M Canal trail. Maddie lay still, listening for sounds to give her an indication on which way they were going. They had not traveled all that far before the four-wheeler came to an abrupt stop, causing Maddie to slide forward and hit her head on the trailer. The man who rode in the back with her grabbed her by one arm and dragged her out of the trailer. Maddie landed on the ground on her side, her shoulder striking concrete. The second man placed his hands under her arms, and the man with her grabbed her feet. The two men carried her up a short flight of steps and through a door into a dark space. Maddie was tossed onto a mattress on the floor.

  After rolling over as far from the men as possible, Maddie attempted to sit up. The plastic ties cut deeper into her wrists as she tried to push herself up. Exhausted from her struggle with the men, Maddie lay on her back, trying to get enough air.

  The space was dark and musky. The only light shined through a slit in the door.

  “I’m just gonna sit here a minute and have a smoke,” one man said.

  Maddie could not see his face in the dark, but she believed him to be the man who had shot Darlene and Ray Junior. An image of poor Ray Junior laying face first on the ground, shot in the back, caused bile to rise in her throat. Her mind began to race. She had been taken by animals. Men who would shoot women and children. She could not comprehend what their intensions for her were, but their willingness to kill so brutally convinced her that her own chances of survival were thin.

  After a while, Maddie could hear both men snoring softly. Sitting on the mattress on the floor of the dark and musky room, she could barely make out a figure lying on the sofa about six feet away. She looked around the room where the other man was sleeping in a chair. The room was small, maybe eight by ten. It opened into an even smaller kitchen. A hall ran off of the kitchen. A door that Maddie thought to be a front exit door was to her left. What was possibly a bedroom door was on the wall across from the front door. It was similar to a camping trailer. Maybe a small trailer home.

  She attempted to sit up straight but found it difficult to do with her hands behind her back. She laid down and tried to slip her zip-tied hands under her buttocks to bring them to the front, but her hands were too painful from the fall and the zip ties cut into her wrist. She rolled onto her side and pushed herself up. She surveyed the room. It stank like piss, puke, cigarettes, and body odor. Very strong body odor.

  She had to pee so bad. She wasn’t sure she could hold it. She did not want to pee herself, but she sure the hell did not want to wake the creeps across the room. She needed to find a back door and get the hell out of there. She scooted off the mattress onto the floor. Peering around a half wall into the kitchen, Maddie looked down the hall and could see what looked to be a back door.

  Maddie tried to push herself to her feet and stumbled, knocking over a small table. The man in the chair stirred. Maddie sat frozen in place, willing the man to go back to sleep.

  He did not. Instead he sat up straight.

  “Carl?”

  Carl did not answer.

  "Carl, is that you?" the man asked.

  Kelly stood and walked over to the mattress on the floor before spotting Maddie near the kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, rushing over to her. He bent down and grabbed her arm. “You trying to get yourself killed?”

  Maddie struggled against the man’s grasp, but could not get enough traction to pull away.

  “If he wakes up and catches you trying to get away, he will hurt you, stupid girl.”

  Kelly dragged Maddie back to the mattress and gently lay her on her side.

  Maddie tried to tell him that she just needed to pee, but with the gag in her mouth he could not understand her. After the fourth attempt he appeared to understand.

  “Oh, you need to pee. Um—the water ain’t working and the toilet is pretty rank in there, but if you behave, I’ll let you go pee.”

  Maddie nodded her head in agreement. Kelly pulled a knife from his pocket and unfolded it. She gasped.

  “I’m gonna cut the restraints on your feet.”

  He slid the knife under the ties and freed her feet. It felt wonderful to not have the zip ties gouging into the skin of her sore ankle. She had high hopes that he would untie her hands. The bathroom was likely down the hall near the back door. She could bolt out the door and get away before he could even grab her. That was her hope anyway.

  “I ain’t gonna cut the ones on your hands. Carl would kill me if I did that, so you best behave while I take you to the bathroom or else it won’t be very pretty for you.”

  Grabbing her arm, Kelly pulled her to her feet. He led her through the tiny kitchen. Dirty dishes filled the sink and lined the counters. Maddie stumbled over takeout containers and pizza boxes. The contents of the trash can overflowed onto the floor. It smelled so bad it made Maddie gag.

  “You think that stinks, you just wait until you lift the lid to the shitter. I can’t stand it so I just go outside.”

  Maddie could not believe the smell. It hit her as soon as Kelly opened the door to the bathroom. She felt as if she were going to vomit and feared she would gag on it if she did. As she fought back the urge, Kelly reached up and pulled down her gag.

  Immediately, Maddie spewed vomit into the bathtub. Finished retching, she held her hands out from her back, gesturing for Kelly to remove her hand restraints. Kelly shook his head no.

  “How am I supposed to pull my pants down?”

  Kelly looked down at her jeans then looked back up.

  “No. You are not undressing me,” Maddie said sternly.

  Kelly pulled out his knife and Maddie turned around. Once he had cut the restraints, Kelly stepped out into the hall and shut the door.

  Maddie opted not to open the lid to the toilet, instead she squatted over the tub. After relieving herself, she looked around the dark bathroom for something to use as a weapon. Scissors, fingernail file, even a toilet brush or plunger would at least be something, but there was nothing.

  A small rap at the door stopped her search.

  “You done in there?”

  The door cracked open, and Maddie stepped out. The back door was just across from the bathroom. She would wait until both men were asleep and she would sneak out that door. She just needed to be patient.

  Kelly lead Maddie back to the mattress and zip-tied her hands, this time in front of her. Maddie scooted back and sat cross-legged. Her wrist hurt where the restraints had cut into her skin.

  “Are you brothers?” Maddie asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You younger or older?”

  “Younger,” he said.

  “I have a younger brother. He can be a pain in the ass most of the time, but he’s my brother, so it’s okay.”

  Kelly said nothing.

  “He’s fourteen, but he thinks he’s gro
wn or something. When my dad died, he got all man-of-the-house attitude and tried to boss me around and shit.”

  “Yeah, Carl bosses me around a lot. It can get annoying.”

  “Zach would be all like, you shouldn’t be hanging with those people, or you missed curfew again. I would remind him that I used to change his diapers and that he wasn’t dad.”

  Maddie remembered that conversation like it was yesterday. That was not all she had said. She had been angry with Zach for calling her out on missing curfew. She had told him he was not her father—that he was nothing like their dad—and never would be. The pained look on his face still haunted her. She wished now that she had apologized to him. She wished she had told him how much he was like dad. He looked like him. His mannerisms were like him. He had the same, you’re-in-deep-shit tone when he scolded her. That was what she had been angry about. He reminded her too much of their dad, and it had made her miss him too much.

  “Where is your brother?” Kelly asked.

  “He was on a class field trip when this shit happened. He is somewhere in southern Illinois with his class.”

  “At least he isn’t alone. There are teachers with him, right?”

  “Yeah. All but one will be useless in this shit. But Mr. Dean—he was in the military. He has seen some shit. He knows how to handle himself. I trust him to take care of Zach. The rest of them, well, I feel sorry for Mr. Dean having to deal with their whiny asses.”

  Kelly laughed.

  Carl coughed and moaned. He rolled back and forth on the sofa, but did not wake.

  “Bad dreams?”

  “No, he’s detoxing. He does that if he doesn’t shoot up every four-to-six hours. That shit is getting impossible to get right now.”

  “Oh, that sucks, I guess,” Maddie said. “Do you use too?”

  “Na, I hate that shit. I’ve watched it destroy everyone I love.”

  “I can see why you hate it.”

  “How did your dad die?” Kelly asked.

  Maddie was quiet. She didn’t want to discuss such a painful subject with this low-life piece of shit, but her strategy to win him over and convince him to let her go might require she put that aside. She exhaled slowly and looked down at her feet. She could barely see them in the dark.