by Lukens, Mark
“That’s between you and him.”
“Yeah, that’s right. You don’t know anything. You’re just an errand boy.”
He glanced at her, that mean twist of a smile back on his face, the cold glint in his eyes. “Careful, Petra. Remember, be nice and I’ll be nice to you. Otherwise, you could have a very uncomfortable ride.”
She looked away from him, unable to stand the sight of the smile smeared on his face. She looked at the woods—they were already thinning out, opening up to fields, a few houses and trailers on large lots. Rippers came from one of the houses up ahead, at least a dozen of them, pouring out into the street, alerted by the sound of Jacob’s truck approaching.
CHAPTER 16
Petra
Jacob hammered the gas pedal down, the Ford picking up speed.
“Hold on,” he told her.
How? she felt like asking, but didn’t. She grabbed the arm rest on the passenger door as best she could with her shackled wrists.
Jacob hit the first ripper that ran into the street, knocking him back out of the way—just a blur of movement after a thump that hardly registered inside the big truck. Jacob hit the next ripper, knocking him out of the way. The third ripper rushing out into the path of the truck on a suicide mission was a teenage girl; Jacob mowed her down, dragging the girl’s body underneath the truck, the tires on the driver’s side bumping up and over her body easily, the girl’s high-pitched screams cut off suddenly.
Jacob smiled.
Petra prayed that one of the rippers with a piece of pipe or kitchen knife would manage to stab the grill of the truck, piercing the radiator. Or maybe one or more of the tires would flatten. But what good would stranding them here do? She wasn’t going to be able to outrun Jacob even if they were suddenly on foot, not with her hands cuffed in front of her. And she probably wouldn’t be able to outrun the rippers. And even if she ran, she had a feeling that Jacob’s orders included killing her and leaving her body behind if he absolutely had to.
And Petra didn’t want to die. Not yet, anyway. Maybe being abducted by this man was a blessing in disguise. She’d wanted to get close to the Dragon; she’d wanted a chance to kill that monster. Maybe this was exactly what she needed.
Jacob raced past the last of the rippers, the rest of them backing up out of the way of the speeding truck like they had figured out that it was useless to attack.
“Yes,” Jacob yelled. “That always gives me a rush.” He glanced at her and his smile was different this time, not the mean little smile, but an insanely happy one now. “If you would’ve told me a few weeks ago that I’d be allowed to run people down right on the street, I would’ve been like, ‘Yeah, right.’ But here I am, able to run down as many as I want. Shoot as many as I want.”
“Obviously you like to kill.”
“I was born to do it. You know how some people know at an early age that they want to be an artist or a singer or that they want to build houses? Their dream, their passion in life? Well, I knew a long time ago that I wanted to kill people. I trained myself to do it. I’ve always loved to fight, to hurt people, to be the baddest, most dangerous man in the room. The top of the food chain, baby. And that’s what I’ve become.”
Petra looked away from Jacob, out the passenger window again. “And now you work for the Dragon. So you’re not really at the top.”
“Hey, he’s the guy with the big ideas. I knew I wasn’t like that. I was never going to be the boss, but I was going to be the boss’s number one man, the enforcer. We all have our roles to play in life. I’m sure you have your role to play.”
She didn’t respond.
“I used to work for a guy who was a lot like the Dragon. I swore never to talk about him or what I used to do for the family . . .” He let out a chuckle. “But, with the circumstances now, I guess it really doesn’t matter anymore. Vincent turned into a ripper. I watched him turn. His whole family turned. I killed them all. None of them left. All gone.”
Petra pretended not to be interested in what Jacob was saying, but she listened as she stared out the passenger window at the cold and gray world whipping by. And Jacob droned on because he knew she was really listening.
“I worked for some lower-level guys at first in Cleveland. But eventually Vincent and his family noticed me. That’s how it works. You work your way up, just like any business. Well, I worked my way up to the top crime family in Cleveland—hell, maybe all of Ohio. I met with Vincent and told him what I could do for him, and he told me what he could do for me. And word hit the street that Vincent had a new enforcer, someone you didn’t want to fuck around with.”
Jacob paused; he was staring at her—she could feel it.
“See, that’s the secret a lot of those younger guys didn’t seem to realize—you don’t need to be violent if they’re already afraid of you. Why waste the time and energy? If we had any trouble, I’d go in to talk to someone and they’d start pissing their pants, stumbling all over themselves to accommodate or apologize. They’d straighten up right away. Yep, they sure would. They knew what I could do. They knew what I’d done before.”
“And now you’re with the Dragon.”
“The Dragon is like Vincent in some ways, but different in so many other ways. You’ll see what I mean.”
“So I’m going to meet him?”
Jacob laughed. “Oh, I think he really wants to meet you and the others.”
Petra looked at Jacob. “What others? The people I was with at the store?”
Jacob stared at her for a moment like he was trying to decide what she meant. “I think you know what I mean.”
The dreams? Was he talking about the people she’d seen in her dreams? She looked out the window again.
“I know you think the Dragon is the enemy, but he’s not. He’s a leader rising up from the ashes of this chaos, giving everyone left a guiding light.”
“He’s hogging up all the food and supplies,” Petra said. “Hoarding everything.”
“Only to redistribute to everyone else. If not, then there would be small bands of gangs, feuds over food and shelter. This way everything will be controlled, everyone eventually getting their fair share.”
“Getting their fair share only if you pledge your allegiance to the Dragon and his laws, right?”
Jacob didn’t answer, quiet for once, watching the road as he drove. “You still don’t understand.” He shook his head slightly. “But you will. You’ll see soon enough.”
Petra looked out the passenger window again, getting comfortable. It was warm inside the truck now with the heater on low, but not too warm. She hadn’t slept well last night in the closet and now she could feel her body practically wilting. She was at the brink of exhaustion, the edge of passing out.
“What did you do with my friends?” she asked without looking at him, without opening her eyes. She didn’t want to look at him any more than she had to. She didn’t want to look into those lifeless eyes, the lack of humanity there—his shark eyes. She wasn’t really afraid of him because she was sure his orders were to keep her alive unless the circumstances were extreme, but at the same time she was still wary of him because Jacob was a man to be feared.
“Friends?”
She could hear the smile in his voice as he taunted her.
“Crystal. Lance. Zak.” She opened her eyes and turned her head to look at him.
He kept his eyes on the road, grinning like he knew a secret.
“Did the Dark Angels take them? Some were killed back at Jeff’s house. I saw their bodies. One was Dale. Who were the other ones? Tyrone? Tamara, maybe? Maybe a Dark Angel or two?” She knew she’d been responsible for the two piles of bones in the side yard that used to be Dark Angels, but she didn’t bother telling him that. “Hard to tell when there’s nothing but bones and bloodstains now.”
“I don’t know.”
He was lying. “Lance’s van was gone. The Dark Angels took it. Does that mean they took Lance and Crystal? Did the Dark Angels tak
e them back to the Dragon?”
“Not my area,” he said. “You’ll have to ask the Dragon about that when you see him.”
She planned on asking him about that . . . and a lot of other things.
CHAPTER 17
Kate
Kate went with Max to collect the supplies and gear they would need to clean up the bodies of Jeff and Neal in the loading bay—or what was left of their bodies. Max had an empty shopping cart, pushing it toward the other side of the store where tools and other supplies were kept. As they walked away, Kate looked back at the collection of tents. Brooke was still in the tent. Hopefully she was sleeping by now.
She thought about telling Max about Brooke’s drawings, about the drawing of Petra handcuffed with the Dragon looming right behind her. But she didn’t want to tell him yet. He would obsess over it, and she wanted to get this chore over with as quickly as possible, and she wanted Max to help her with it.
Max loaded the shopping cart with supplies he found on the shelves: a flathead shovel, an ax, a heavy-duty mop and bucket, and two plastic tarps still folded up neatly and sealed in clear plastic.
They went back to the other side of the store where the cleaning products were stored near the aisles of dry food. Kate used another shopping cart and filled it with a few gallons of bleach, a package of rags, a box of heavy-duty contractor garbage bags, and a roll of duct tape. For their personal protective gear, she grabbed four packages of long dishwashing gloves, two heavy-duty rubber aprons, two pairs of rubber boots, a few dust masks, two rubber shower caps, and a pair of goggles for each of them.
It took nearly fifteen minutes just to get the supplies together that they were going to need. Hopefully they hadn’t forgotten anything. Hopefully once they started this, they could just get it done and over with.
Kate definitely wasn’t looking forward to cleaning up two exploded bodies. But she probably wouldn’t have been much help with the other tasks, and she figured nobody would be jumping up and down to volunteer for this. At least Max had volunteered to help her. She was happy about that.
They pushed their shopping carts back through the hall toward the loading bays.
The smell of the bodies assaulted Kate almost immediately, not the rotting smell she’d come to know so well over the last few weeks, but the coppery scent of blood and fresh meat.
Fernando offered to bring them some buckets of rainwater that they had collected on the roof for later when it came time to clean up the rollup door and the concrete floor.
They pushed the shopping carts into the loading bay, toward the unrecognizable bodies melted together on the floor, two lumps of gore twisted together among ragged clothing. The blast radius was almost twenty-five feet. Blood, bits of meat, clots of hair, and slivers of bone were all over the rollup door, the wall, and the floor. Puddles of it all around.
Max looked up at the rafters. “At least it’s not up there.”
“Yeah,” Kate said. “Way to look on the bright side.”
Max chuckled a little as he opened the package of shower caps, pulling one of them onto his head.
“Neal’s body kept most of the blast underneath him. I guess it could’ve been a lot worse,” Kate said.
“So Neal jumped down from those rafters?”
“He said he used to do that kind of work. Construction. Said he was good at the high work. Never afraid of heights. Said he always knew he wasn’t going to die by falling.”
For once Max remained silent, opening the packages of gloves, goggles, and aprons.
“He said a lot of weird stuff the last time I talked to him,” Kate continued. “I figured the infection and fever were getting to him.”
“He saved our lives,” Max said. “Even if the Dark Angels wouldn’t have gotten in here through the blast in the door, eventually the rippers would have.”
Kate could imagine hundreds of rippers pouring in through the shredded hole in the metal rollup door.
Max slipped on one of the aprons, wrapping the string around his waist and tying it in front in a neat bow. He slipped on one of the goggles, adjusting it over the shower cap, making sure none of his hair was poking out. He put on a dust mask and then a pair of yellow dishwashing gloves.
Kate picked up the other pair of goggles. “These were the kind we had to use in science class.”
“We had to dissect frogs,” Max said.
“We got to dissect an octopus.”
Max stared at her. “That’s weird.”
“And frogs, too,” Kate added as she put her apron on, tying it in place.
“Let’s talk about something else.”
After they were dressed in their protective gear, they both slipped off their shoes and shoved their feet down into the rubber boots.
“I wish we had a garden hose,” Max said. “Probably make this a lot easier. Just wash everything out the door.”
There were a lot of things Kate wished for, things that made life easier, things she had taken for granted. But wishing wasn’t going to make any of it come true. She opened the packages of tarps and took out a few of the heavy-duty garbage bags while Max started mopping up the blood, working from the farthest spray of blood, working toward the two bodies.
They used one of the yellow buckets with a ringer attached to it. When the water got too bloody, they switched it out with the next bucket of rainwater Fernando had brought them, using a lot of bleach with the water.
Kate worked on the rollup door, scrubbing the grooves, spraying bleach cleaner on it. Even with her goggles on, the bleach was bothering her eyes a little. The locks on the rollup door and the smaller door to the right looked okay. At least the blast hadn’t damaged them. A few parts of the metal rollup door were bent, pushed in, but nothing was torn.
After they cleaned the walls, door, and the floors, it was time to deal with the bodies.
Max laid out two tarps and dragged the largest pieces of the bodies onto them, blood trailing and smearing across the floor and the tarp. After that, Kate held the garbage bags open while Max shoveled the last bits of flesh, pieces of bone and torn, ragged strips of cloth into them.
They scrubbed the floor where the pieces of bodies had been and the floor around the edge of the tarps. They folded the tarps up carefully, using a whole roll of duct tape to secure the tarps and keep them closed.
After they were done, Fernando came back. He unlocked and opened the rollup garage door, trying to do it as quietly as he could. The door slid up easily in its track. He looked around at the fenced-in area, making sure there were no rippers beyond the fence.
Nobody out there.
Phil and Tina had come with Fernando this time. Phil went down the ramp to where the pallets of car batteries were laid out against the outer wall where they were protected from rain and snow by the overhang there. He changed the cables on the batteries, from the used batteries to the fresh ones while Tina kept watch with a walkie-talkie in her hand.
Fernando started the pickup truck up and backed it up to the ramp. He slipped on a pair of rubber gloves and helped Max get the tarps and garbage bags into the back of the truck. Tina walked down to the corner of the building, still watching, keeping in contact with the shooters on the roof of the store.
“I can get it from here,” Max told Kate. He pulled off his shower cap, goggles, dust mask, apron, and gloves and threw them into the last open garbage bag. Kate pulled off her cap, goggles, dust mask, apron and gloves and threw them into the bag. Max put on a fresh pair of gloves and tied the bag up.
“Okay,” Kate told him. “Thanks for your help.”
“Sure.”
“Just . . . just be careful out there.”
“I will. Now go get some rest.”
“I will.” She wanted to get some rest, and she would, but first she wanted to talk to Jo—she wanted to show her Brooke’s drawings.
CHAPTER 18
Max
Max rode with Fernando in the pickup truck. He had a handgun and Fernando had a shot
gun, their only weapons. Not much of an arsenal if a horde of rippers came running into the parking lot. But Tina had been watching and keeping in contact with the spotters on the roof. Fernando also had a walkie-talkie in the truck, tuned to the channel, listening for any alarms. So far the ripper reports from the roof were just a few stragglers at the edge of the parking lot, but there were a lot of them across the street and beyond the intersection at the gas station and the store. There were also a few dozen rippers roaming around the partially constructed building across the side street. Two rippers were seated in the middle of the intersection for some reason.
The sun was higher in the sky now, the day brightening up. But it was still very cold. This was supposed to be the least active time for the rippers—pre-dawn and the first hour or two of morning—but there still seemed to be a lot of activity according to the reports from the roof. And maybe many of the rippers were sleeping somewhere, maybe even most of them. But not all of them. Never all of them. And they could be awakened easily.
Fernando was a quiet man, a brooding man. Maybe the apocalypse had made him that way, losing his family, his friends, everyone he knew, trying to survive in this new hellish world. But Max suspected that Fernando had always been this way—a man of few words, a man who kept his thoughts and emotions to himself.
While cleaning up the two dead bodies, Max had planned to talk to Kate about Petra, about his feelings that she was still alive. But he hadn’t. He had spoken to Jo and everyone about it at the little meeting they’d had an hour ago, but nobody else seemed concerned about going to look for Petra. Like he’d told Jo, they knew roughly where she was, at Jeff’s house. It had obviously been a setup by Jeff, and the Dark Angels had been waiting there to attack them. Max supposed it was possible they’d been ambushed along the way to Jeff’s house, but it just made more sense to attack at Jeff’s house. That meant that Petra, if she got away, could still be somewhere around Jeff’s house.
