Curious as to the source of the lingering odor she followed her nose to a wooden box. An old, brown-stained ammo crate with dried flakes of waste still clinging to it sat in a corner. Zero growled, detected the scent of Gordon and his hackles raised.
“It’s alright, boy.” She said and panned the light around.
It was a cluttered office with boxes of goods stacked nearly to the ceiling in places. The flashlight danced over the pictures, plaques and posters that adorned the walls. There were a lot of awards from the Putnam Recreation League for sponsorship of different sports teams dating back for decades.
The pictures were interspersed among the awards and told the life story of a robust young soldier proudly wearing his uniform as he aged into a kind looking potbellied old man who probably dressed up as Santa every year. Most of them were pictures of the owner with different people. Men in suits, men in sports jerseys, an Olympic girls’ volleyball team. Happy memories of a world that didn’t exist anymore.
She studied one photo of the smiling man and a pleasant looking older lady standing in front of a cruise ship. They looked happy and she wondered for a second what it would feel like to be loved that way. To be with someone your whole life. To have adventures and grow old together. It made her sad, it reminded her a lot of her grandfather and his messy workshop. The office had been cluttered but organized before, now it looked like a giant rats nest. A rat named Gordon, she thought. Clothes, old food wrappers and drink bottles filled with a sickly-looking yellow fluid littered the floor. She realized the wooden crate was Gordon’s toilet and the bottles were filled with urine. She grimaced. This was where Kodiak had found him. Cowering in his own filth. Only the lowest of the animal species defecated where they slept and ate, and in her opinion, there was no lower form of life than Gordon Lowery. She used an arrow to stir around through the mess looking for clues. Zero padded out and waited for her in the store. She didn’t blame him. He maintained a low steady rumbling growl from his chest and bared his fangs. He loathed Gordon almost as much as she did, she thought with a wry smile. She rooted around looking for a discarded wallet or piece of paper, anything he might have dropped that would give her an idea where to find his sorry ass. There was nothing in the pile of dirty clothes that he’d used for a bed. Disgusted, she turned her attention to the desk shoved up against the wall.
Kodiak had hidden Gordon’s shame from the tribe. He’d done everything he could to give him an equal standing and become one of them, but this filthy lair revealed the true nature he hid behind his designer clothes and fast talk.
She plopped down in the worn leather chair and rocked it slowly back and forth, letting her light play over the mountain of clutter that covered the desk. Why were you and daddy Snootypants here, Gordy? What would bring two rich jerks into a business like this? She rifled through the pile.
Papers, bills and flyers.
Invoices.
Purchase orders.
Closeout sale advertisements.
Final Notice.
She took a closer look at that one. She scanned over the text until she reached the bottom of the page. It looked like the store owner was about to lose his lease. Her heart thudded in her chest when she saw what she was looking for. There in scrawling ink across the bottom, the signature of Gordon Lowery Senior. She looked around for the envelope that it was mailed in and found it in the waste bin beside the desk. Some business address in Minnesota. Not his home but probably pretty close to it. She’d never traveled that far north in her search for Gordon, but it made sense. With their ATV’s and a couple of spare gas cans, they could easily roam a hundred miles in any direction they chose. For the first time in a long time, she missed her cell phone. She couldn’t google him up and dig through his life. How did people do it in the old days when all you could do with a telephone was talk?
She opened a drawer and dug through the desk. She found a rubber band bound stack of business cards and flipped through them, tossed each on the floor as she read it.
Near the back of the stack, she found the one she was looking for. Gordon Lowery Senior. CEO. Lowery Investments and Realty. Smith Falls, MN. Her cold smile was downright icy. Now she had a town. Now he was within reach. She pulled out the drawer, dumped the contents on the desk and threw it aside. She was so close; this was the first evidence she’d found of Gordon’s life before the apocalypse. She tossed sales flyers, pocket change, books of stamps and more business cards aside as she rooted around. Nothing else with a Lowery name on it. She swept the desk clean with her arm and opened the next drawer. Inside there was a thick yellow book. She’d never even seen a phone book, if you needed to call somebody, you just googled their number, got it off the internet. She dropped it aside but the search revealed nothing else of any use. Frustrated, she sat back in the chair and sighed. She was so close she could taste it. If he was in Smith Falls, it would be easy to find him. How many gated communities were there in a small town? Her eyes fell on the phone book again. Her grandparents had books like this in the junk drawer of their kitchen. She picked it up and flipped it open. Rows and rows of tiny print. Last name first, address, phone number. She flipped excitedly to the L’s. She almost yelled when she found it. Lowery, Gordon Sr., underneath it Lowery, Richard Sr. They were neighbors. Bingo. It showed his street and house number. She finally had that rat bastard. She committed it to memory then tore the page from the book and folded it into her pocket.
She grabbed her bow, the overstuffed backpack and checked through the windows for any undead. Satisfied, she opened the door for Zero and the cubs and slipped out behind him. A large black cloud of smoke was curling up in the far distance and her hand fell away from the door. It was miles away and coming from the exact direction of home. From the sanctuary.
26
Gordon
Gordon and his gang had crept into Putnam under the cover of darkness and found the remnants of the Anubis cult at his father’s warehouse. There were only scattered bones and shreds of cloth, they’d been eaten by something, but the empty shell casings told how they died. A battle had been fought there and the Anubis people had gotten the worst of it. Gordon kicked a busted and gnawed skull as he cursed silently. He didn’t see any big animal bones or small skulls, anything that looked like it might belong to the brats and their beasts. He heard his father whispering in his brain. Those kids did this. They ruin everything you work for, yet you continue to hide from them. You aren’t worthy of the Lowery name.
“Shut up!” Gordon said. “Just shut up! I’m trying to think.”
His crew looked at him and each other. None of them had said a word. He glared at them, dared, even wanted one of them to say anything. He lightly touched the butt of the Smith & Wesson. They wouldn’t meet his eyes and looked away. The brats had guns and knew how to use them. This changed things. This made them even more dangerous. They might even come looking for him now. He chewed his lower lip and ignored the rantings of his old man. What did he know?
“Follow me.” He grunted. “And keep it quiet.”
They climbed on their ATV’s, kept the lights off and circled miles out of the way to come in a back road to the rear of the zoo. He was being careful, he didn’t want any of the animals to hear the engines and let them know company was coming. They had ruined his plans and probably got him put on a hit list with the Anubis Society. He wasn’t playing nice this time. He’d show them and his old man a thing or two. He’d show them what happened if they messed with a Lowery.
They snipped the chain link fence and stayed to the deepest shadows as they made their way towards the house. They were dressed in their riding pads with camo clothing over the armor and their faces were streaked in hunters paint. Gordon kept expecting to spook the herds of gazelles but the overgrown fields were empty, nothing moved in them. The only sound was the breeze rustling though the trees and as much as he hated the animals it was strange not seeing any of them. Maybe they’d escaped or the brats ate them last winter. Either way, it was good f
or him, no dumb animals to send bounding away, maybe alerting them.
They took cover on the back side of a slight rise. Far enough away they wouldn’t be scented but close enough to spy on the house. Gordon peered through the riflescope while his men settled in and tried to get comfortable. They had barely gotten situated before dawn and some of them had already nodded off to sleep. He didn’t really have a plan, everything had changed when he saw the dead soldiers and all the spent brass. He couldn’t get close if the kids had machine guns. Maybe he’d wait until they went out to feed the animals, then he’d snipe a few of them. He wasn’t sure how well the hunting rifles would take out the bears but everyone had one and if you shot it enough times you could kill anything. He was in a good position for some long distance shooting. He could pick them off one by one. He could see if they left the house to flank them and they had the cover of the hill to get away whenever they wanted.
As the sun came up, he saw the damage to the house and the garden. Some kind of battle had happened here, too. He couldn’t imagine what had destroyed the place, broken all the windows and tore down the greenhouse. He was eager to count heads when they woke up, maybe most of them were already dead. Maybe the Society had already taken care of them. He waited and was surprised when nobody came out to feed the stinking barn animals and when he didn’t hear the stupid rooster start crowing he swung the scope over to the barn. The gate was wide open. All of the animals were gone. All of their food. Harper and Vanessa came out of the house a few minutes later and he tracked them as they went to their pens and saddled their companions. Harper was still alive, that was good. He had plans for her. He had a cold smile on his face as he stroked the trigger, the cross hairs on the big, stupid giraffes head.
An engine fired up and he moved the scope over to the sound. He was surprised again when the whole tribe and all of the hated animals followed a tractor out of the front gate. None of them had guns, either. They still carried their spears and axes. He frowned and moved his sights over to Murray. Of course, the cripple didn’t go, he was on the porch with the three little ones, whatever their names were. Everyone else was gone and he’d bet money they were going to his warehouse to steal his food. That was okay. That gave him plenty of time to take care of things here. Those brats had suffered some losses, that was obvious, but they were about to suffer some more. He rolled ideas around in his head as he watched. They never should have messed with a Lowery. They never should have killed his people. He hadn’t liked any of them and couldn’t remember their names but that wasn’t the point. It was the principle of the thing. He was going to hurt them and disappear. In a few months after they started rebuilding, he’d come back and do it again. Break their spirits and demoralize them. Death by a thousand cuts. It was much better to see your enemy suffer than kill him instantly.
That was a lesson he’d learned when he was eight or ten. It was so much more satisfying to keep the neighbor’s dogs and cats alive for days than it was to simply smash their heads with rock or poison them. He took immense pleasure helping distraught owners search for the missing pet when he knew the truth. He knew exactly where Fluffy or Fido were caged, hungry and afraid. He would have to control himself, pretend concern and help them hang up flyers for the poor lost thing. He’d look in their worried faces and control the hysterical giggles that wanted to bubble up. It was so, so satisfying. It felt so much better to keep the stupid animals alive for days. To experiment with various ways to cause pain. To burn it or dump battery acid on its face or break a few more bones with the hammer.
He was breathing hard just thinking about it and snapped his mind back to the present. To know-it-all Murray who had let them kick him out. He could have died out in the wild and they didn’t care. He’d never had a chance to experiment on a human. Murray would have the honor of being the first.
He’d been angry when he’d ordered the boys to join him for a visit to the warehouse to find out what happened.
He’d been afraid when he saw the remains of the soldiers and all the empty bullets.
He’d been worried when they snuck into the zoo to try to figure out what had happened.
Now he was happy. He would get a little payback and all their guns. The idiots had left them behind. He couldn’t wait to see the looks on their stupid faces when they came back with a wagon load of his food and faced down his men with their very own guns. The irony was delicious.
The cripple was alone in the house and they had the place to themselves all day. He hoped the guns were hidden away and weren’t out in the open. He hoped it would take a long time for Murray to tell him where they were. This was going to be a lot of fun. He sent two of his men to watch the gate and sound the alarm if the tribe came back unexpectedly. He sent Cowboy to the garage to get some paint thinner and warned him to keep out of sight until they had disarmed the cripple if he didn’t want to get shot. The rest of his gang followed him to the house. He didn’t know where the three little kids had gotten off to and didn’t really care. They were too young to be of any use to him and too small to be a threat.
Gordon stood with Bong and Jester at the edge of the porch and looked at all damage. The rest of the gang crouched low and stared in every direction, wary of danger. Now that they were closer, they could hear the little kids cleaning manure out of the barn and singing some silly song. Bong and Jester glanced around nervously at all the destruction. Something had really done a number on the place. The door had been repaired but somebody or something had smashed through it. Maybe the rhino had gone wild. The windows had plastic and scrap lumber over them, the porch railing was broken and there were stains everywhere. They’d been scrubbed but it was obvious it had been blood. Lots of it. They hadn’t forgotten the fight last winter either and they didn’t really want to be there. This was a bad idea, they should just leave the kids alone. The old house looked way scary, like it was a real haunted house. Halloween decorations from the year before still hung in some places and the boarded-up windows added to the creep factor.
Gordon saw a flash of motion in one of the windows. He looked up to see a tiny brown and white face staring at him. That stupid monkey, he thought. The capuchin disappeared and he heard the chittering as it sounded the alarm.
“Get in there!” He roared at Bong and Jester and the three bounded up the steps.
He held the big pistol in his hands, ready to blow the boy away if he opened fire.
Jester was the first through the door and stumbled over his own feet. His body hit the floor with a thud, hands grasping at his throat. He gurgled around a knife buried to the hilt. He pawed at it uselessly, tried to draw air and died drowning in his own blood.
Gordon leapt over Jester’s flailing body and shoved Bong ahead of him, used him as a shield. The monkeys were screaming and leaping around the room and one of them hurled something at him. He dodged it and shoved Bong into Murray who was trying to back away and throw another knife at the same time. The two collided in a tangle of limbs as the wheelchair tipped over and something hit him in the back. He spun and fired round after round at the fleeing monkeys, the booming of the gun loud inside the house.
27
Gordon and Murray
“You guys really let this place go downhill after I left.” Gordon looked around at the damage to the old house.
He casually thumbed more rounds into the revolver. He’s shot all six and had only hit one of the screeching little monkeys, they moved too fast.
“What happened here, anyway?” He asked. “And where are the guns?”
Murray said nothing and quietly twisted his wrists, tried to loosen the knots holding them to the arms of the wheelchair.
“Looks like something tried to make a snack out of you but spit you out.” Gordon said and clicked the cylinder closed with a flick of his wrist. Cool and casual like he’d seen in the movies. Like he’d practiced a thousand times.
Murray didn’t respond.
Gordon shot him.
The bullet went into h
is leg above the knee, ripped a furrow through meat and muscle then punched through the floor. Murray didn’t even flinch, his blood pooled in the seat then dripped out of the hole.
“Tough guy, huh?” Gordon said “Couldn’t feel that could you? How about this?”
He whipped the pistol across the boy’s face and more blood flew from a broken nose.
Murray let out a grunt of pain but refused to give Gordon the satisfaction of hearing him cry out.
“Where’s the guns?” Gordon asked again and stared in fascination at the crimson pouring down Murray’s chin. It was so bright.
“I don’t like this, man. What if they come back? I thought this was gonna be a hit and git,” Bong said as he looked out a broken window for any sign of the wild kids or their vicious animals. “Maybe we should just go.”
He glanced down at Jester, he’d finally stopped thrashing around. He had no desire to tangle with them again, especially when he was in their house. Even the cripple kid was deadly.
“Don’t worry, they can’t hear the shots from this far away.” Gordon answered. “Besides, they don’t have the guns with them. If you see them, start shooting. Don’t give them a chance, just waste ‘em.”
“And for the record, I’m in charge here.” He added. “You’d do well to remember that so shut your face and start looking for the guns. Bullets, too.”
“What are we gonna do with Jester?” he asked.
“Leave him.” Gordon screamed. “Now go do what I told you.”
The Feral Children (Book 2): Savages Page 17
