Marshal sprung into action. He cut another section of rope, and tied John’s legs together tightly, at his ankles and also right below his knees. He also tied his arms together right below the elbows.
Marshal was in the process of figuring out the best way to rig John up like a sled so that he could drag him through the snow when off in the distance he saw a lone figure approaching.
Another victim. Just what he needed.
He just had to be careful. He didn’t want to kill whoever it was too early.
29
Cynthia
There was someone off in the distance, waving at her. He was wearing a parka, just like the one she was wearing.
It didn’t look like John. But it was hard to tell. For years now, her eyesight had always gotten significantly worse when she’d been tired, even though she didn’t wear glasses. Her doctor had told her it was normal.
She was definitely tired now. Exhausted beyond the point she’d thought she could stand.
Looking through the scope of her rifle, she saw his face. It wasn’t John.
Cynthia moved the gun. There was something on the ground.
A body.
Was it John?
He must have come this way. This was where his footprints led.
Max had been right. There’d been more out there.
Cynthia felt the panic rising through her.
Was John dead?
The man in the parka was furiously waving his arms in the air, signaling for help. He didn’t seem to have a gun.
Maybe he was someone else. Maybe he wasn’t an enemy. Maybe something had happened to John, and this man was trying to help.
She shouldn’t take any chances. She couldn’t afford to. It was life and death out here.
The feelings she had for John suddenly came to the surface, only causing her to panic more. She cared about him. Deeply. If he was still alive, she needed to do something.
“Don’t move!” shouted Cynthia, as loudly as she could.
The man kept waving his hands.
The man was shouting something. Very loudly. But they were far away. She could only make out some of the words. It sounded like he was saying “hurt!” or something similar.
Maybe the safest thing to do was just shoot the man dead. Maybe that’d be the best thing not just for herself, but for John’s chances of survival as well.
Then again, if John was hurt and not dead, the situation was completely different. There was no one else around. There was no way to contact anyone at the camp for help. Max and Mandy had gone in the opposite direction.
Cynthia crept forward, using her scope to keep an eye on the situation.
She realized that she might not have been thinking clearly due to exhaustion, due to fatigue, due to extreme stress. Her emotions were running wild, and she couldn’t keep them in check. Deep breaths were doing nothing. Her pulse was skyrocketing. She felt like she was hyperventilating.
She and John had been through so much. She’d seen so many deaths. She’d seen her husband gunned down in front of her. She’d seen more bodies than she’d ever thought possible. More blood. More guts. Even brains. Dead animals. She lived now in the woods, carried a gun daily, and hadn’t showered in who knew how long. Her body had tightened up. She’d lost weight and some muscle. She thought she’d toughened up. She thought she could deal with a situation like this.
She’d seen John injured before, when she hadn’t known if he’d make it. She’d seen him on the brink of death.
In those situations, she’d kept as calm a head as she could.
What was different now?
Maybe nothing. Maybe it was just hard, if not impossible, to remember what she’d really been feeling in those situations. Maybe her memory had tricked her, telling her that she’d dealt with those situations fine. It could be a sort of survival mechanism.
But it wasn’t doing her any good now. This felt like the first time she was experiencing all this.
Her boots crunched in the snow as she slowly inched forward.
The man standing didn’t move except to wave his hands.
“He’s hurt!” he was shouting. His words were becoming more clear the closer Cynthia got.
They were close enough now to have a conversation by shouting at each other. Cynthia used the scope on her rifle to scan the area, looking for weapons. There were none, except for John’s gun, which lay partially buried in the snow. The stranger didn’t make a move for it. He didn’t look threatening. There was an honest expression on his face. Not that his expression meant anything.
“What happened?” shouted Cynthia.
“He fell. Must have slipped. He’s unconscious. I just found him like this.”
Cynthia was frozen, gun in her hands, eye pressed to the scope. She didn’t know what to do.
“Come on! I need help. I’m not going to hurt you.”
There was a genuine quality to the stranger’s voice. It made her want to trust him.
Every part of her wanted to trust him. It would be easier that way. After all, everyone couldn’t be bad. Right? Just because the EMP had hit and society had collapsed, it didn’t mean that everyone suddenly turned into some kind of monster. Right? That’d be impossible.
Cynthia remembered that not that long ago, John had been a stranger himself. And he wasn’t a monster. He wasn’t a cold-hearted killer. He was a good man. And so was Max. And there was Georgia, Mandy, and many others. They’d been good people. Surely there were other good people out there.
“I was going to try to drag him to my camp,” the man was shouting. “That’s why I’ve got him tied up like this. I couldn’t wake him up no matter what I tried. I didn’t know what to do.”
That part of the story checked out. There was a rope trailing from John’s body, just the way Cynthia would have done it if she’d needed to drag an unconscious person across the snow.
“Come on! We don’t have much time. He looks really hurt. Do you have any medical training?”
Cynthia wanted to believe. She was dying to believe the stranger. And maybe she’d die for it.
She walked towards him, slowly. She slung the gun over her shoulder, and drew her handgun. She felt more comfortable with it. She kept it aimed at the stranger, who kept his hands in the air.
Finally, after what had felt like an eternity, she was there, standing mere feet away from John and the stranger.
The stranger had a kind face, flooded with concern. There was something odd about it. But she couldn’t place what it was. Something incredibly minor. Something that didn’t matter. Not now.
She could feel herself making up her mind. John looked like he was in bad shape. She needed to help him. She needed to trust this stranger. It might be the only way that John would survive.
It wasn’t until Cynthia was very close that she noticed something strange about the way John was tied up. His legs were bound together, as if he was a prisoner.
Cynthia acted rather than spoke.
But the stranger was already moving towards her. He was fast and strong, moving like lightning, quickly closing the gap between them.
Cynthia squeezed the trigger. There wasn’t time to aim properly. She did the best she could.
The stranger grunted in pain. She’d hit him.
But he kept coming. He was simply too fast.
He was tall, appearing massive in his white parka. His expression seemed to have changed. The last thing Cynthia registered was the realization that the stranger had been acting. The whole thing had been a ruse, from his voice right down to his facial expression.
His face now only showed intensity and cruelty. His face was so close to hers. Everything happened so fast.
He was swinging something at her, right at her head.
The gunshot hadn’t seemed to affect him. It hadn’t slowed him down.
Something hard collided with Cynthia’s head. It knocked her out cold immediately.
30
John
John woke up with searing pain rushing through his throbbing skull. His body felt stiff with the cold. He could barely think, let alone think straight, with his throbbing headache. It was worse than the one migraine he’d had in his life, and that migraine had kept him out of work for two days.
John tried to move. But he couldn’t. His body was responding, but his legs and arms seemed to be tied together. He strained against his bindings, but it was absolutely no use. He couldn’t move an inch.
He lay on his back. The ground was uneven and cold. Slowly, he opened his eyes. He was staring straight up to the sky. He could see some naked tree branches stretched out over the sky. The sky itself was cloudy and grey.
Where was he?
What had happened?
He tried to think. Where had he been last? What had been doing?
The last thing he could remember was leaving the camp early in the morning. The light had been just rising. Or so he thought. The memory was fuzzy. His whole brain felt hazy, and he felt nauseous and dizzy. His thinking wasn’t clear. It was hard to hold onto one thought for too long.
What had he been thinking about? Oh yeah, he’d been trying to remember what had happened to him, trying to figure out why he was bound and lying on the ground.
He’d left with someone. There’d been someone else, someone he cared about. He tried to get his brain to focus, to remember, but it was like trying to run that last mile of a marathon.
Suddenly, it came to him. Cynthia had been with him.
Where was she now? And what had happened in the meantime?
John knew he needed to act rationally. Even if he couldn’t think rationally, he could still do something. He’d been complaining, and perhaps hurt, thinking that his brother Max didn’t have the answers. But in the last week he had learned something important from Max, which was that no matter what, there was always something helpful to do, some action that would get you to a better place than when you started. No matter how hopeless things seemed, there was always something to do, something to try.
Not that John could really think thoughts like that now, remembering what his brother had told him. Instead, it was an attitude that he’d internalized over time.
It hurt immensely, but John managed to turn his head to the side, so that his cheek was pressed into the snow.
There was a man not far away. Only a few feet. He seemed familiar but John couldn’t place him.
He opened his eyes wider, trying to see, even though the extra light only seemed to make the pain worse.
“Ah, you’re awake. Good.” The man spoke in a strange way, with a strange cadence.
“Who are you?” said John. His voice came out scratch and raspy. How long had he been unconscious? Maybe he was dehydrated. Just speaking those words made the pain in his head worse.
“Who am I? That’s a complicated question to ask anyone. I mean, who are any of us?”
It took John a moment to process this strange reply.
“No, I mean. Who are you? And why do you have me tied up like this?”
“You mean you don’t remember me?”
“No,” said John, the words causing him more pain.
The stranger had been facing slightly away from John. Now he turned fully towards him. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, and one of his shirt sleeves was missing. It looked like it’d been cut off. Bits of frayed cloth hung down.
The man had some kind of wound, right below his shoulder, where a tape bandage covered the flesh.
John was so cold it was hard to imagine that the stranger could stand the temperatures without a jacket.
“Well this is a strange development,” said the stranger. “This is going to… ruin it a little for me…”
“What? Ruin what?”
“I’ll have to explain everything to you, I suppose. Otherwise, you won’t understand what’s going on. Who knows how badly I damaged your brain. I wouldn’t worry about it, though. You won’t need it for much longer. The principal thing is that you can get the idea into your head that I’m about to torture you. It’s going to be painful. As painful as I can possibly make it. I want you to fully understand that fact. Otherwise, you’ll just be some incoherent mess of pain. And that doesn’t really do it for me. Not at all.”
John’s confused mind was reeling. He understood everything well enough to know he’d soon die.
Unless he could find a way out.
He thrashed against his bindings. But it accomplished nothing. Nothing at all.
Cynthia.
He’d left with Cynthia.
Where was she?
“Where is she?” said John.
“Your friend? She tried to save you. But I tricked her, and she didn’t realize what was going on until it was too late. You’re all the same, all of you. Your feeble minds are so easily fooled by a sign of faked emotion. I just don’t understand it. And I never will.”
John watched as the man snorted something from a small plastic card. Maybe it was a credit card, nothing but a relic of the pre-EMP world.
“Don’t worry about this little injury,” said the demented stranger. “Your friend tried her best, like I said. It was worth it to me to receive this injury, if the trade-off was going to be that she lived. At least for a little while. This won’t slow me down. Not in the least bit.”
So Cynthia was alive.
“Where do you have her? Where is she?”
“Where is she? Are you blind? She’s right behind you. So you two care about each other, is that right? What is it? Something romantic? A husband-wife situation? Girlfriend-boyfriend? That’ll make this all the better. You’ll be in pain when I hurt her, and vice-versa. I knew she cared enough about you to try to help you, but that could happen between strangers. You’re all so boring, all you normal people, and yet so interesting.”
John turned his head over, facing the other direction. It caused him considerable pain to do so. Something wasn’t right about his neck, or his back.
Cynthia was there, tied up just like he was. She was unconscious.
“Cynthia,” hissed John. “Cynthia, wake up.”
But she didn’t wake up. He could see she was still breathing, though. She was still alive. For now.
“Don’t worry, she’ll wake up eventually. She’ll be able to see what I do to you. You know, I was going to wait until you were both awake. For the full effect. But I think I’ll start off slow with you, and see if your screams wake her up. This is going to take a while, anyway, and there’s plenty of time for fun with the both of you.”
The man, still not wearing a jacket, drew a large knife from somewhere. He stood up and began walking towards John.
John thrashed again against the rope that bound him. But it was no use. There was nothing he could do. He was helpless. The helplessness itself ate away at him, causing him deep emotional pain.
If he could have only done something. If he could have only gone down fighting. That would have been better. Far better.
“Let’s start with the fingernails, shall we?” said the stranger, leaning down over John. He laughed. “No, we’ll move onto that. First thing’s first, let’s see some blood. Just a little. Don’t worry, I’m not going to let you bleed out. The end will be much more painful than that.”
The man moved out of view. John felt him tugging on his pant leg, doing something with it. He heard the sounds of fabric tearing. John felt the cold of the snow and the air against his now-bare leg. The man had cut away part of his pants, from the knee downward.
John felt the knife running delicately across his skin. The steel was cold, but it didn’t yet cut him or pierce him.
A second later, that changed.
John barely felt it, but he knew the knife had cut him.
“Like I said,” said the stranger. “I like to start off slow. This is the lowest amount of pain you’ll feel for the rest of the day. Soon enough I’ll break out the pliers. I always have them with me. You know, so I can remove your nails.”
31
/>
Max
Max and Mandy had followed the footprints in the snow for a long time.
“It looks like he’s walking fast. Very fast,” said Max.
“How can you tell?”
“It’s just a guess based on how far apart the prints are. And think about how warm the body was. We’re moving at a good pace, but he’s still ahead of us. By a lot.”
“Take a look at that.”
Up ahead, the snow had been greatly disturbed. There were clusters of footprints in one area as well as a place, about the size of a body, where the snow had been pushed aside.
“What the hell happened here?” said Mandy, when they got to the area. She bent down, trying to get a closer look at the prints and strange marks.
Max said nothing for a moment. His gaze was off in the distance, trying to make sense of the various paths.
“There’s blood,” said Mandy.
“Something happened here,” said Max.
“What, though?”
“Don’t know. But someone’s in trouble.”
“Don’t you think they’re already dead?”
“There’s no body. And look at those tracks. Looks like someone dragged a body through the snow.”
“Maybe they were just trying to hide it?”
“Maybe.”
“It could be anyone,” said Mandy. “It could have been Georgia, John…”
“No point in worry about it,” said Max, cutting her off. “There’s no way to contact them to see what happened. The only thing to do is follow the tracks, and deal with the situation once we get there.”
“What if we can’t?”
“Can’t?”
“I mean what if we can’t deal with it. Whoever this is has already killed once. Probably twice.”
“We have to try,” said Max.
He was already leading the way, walking through the snow. A gust of wind blew in, chilling his face. The wind cut through his pants. The cold seemed to make his leg hurt more.
Fighting Rough Page 16
