Dark Days of the After (Book 4): Dark Days of the Enclave

by Schow, Ryan

  “I’m not touching that thing,” Skylar said, half her attention on them, the other half on the massive size of the SAA gathering behind them.

  “You’re the only broad here,” Noah said, joining them. “Man up and put the bishop back in his cotton chambers.”

  She turned and glared at the old man, his white beard long, his eyes tucked away in the shadows of the night.

  “I said I’m not touching it,” she argued.

  “If you think you’re not going to have to look at it again,” Noah said, “then you obviously know nothing about what we’re going to do to this guy to get info out of him.”

  “Believe me,” she snarled, “I get the whole torture thing. I’ve had firsthand knowledge of it, thank you very much.”

  “Great, then you know the drill,” Noah said. “So quit messing around and just do it.”

  “You do it!” she hissed.

  “One man doesn’t touch another man’s business without it changing him, unless he’s gay and I ain’t. Not that I have judgements against folks who go that way. I don’t.”

  “Fine,” she finally said. She went and put him away, zipped him up, then wiped her hands on the grass and said, “The frickin’ thing’s all wet.”

  They took turns carrying the unconscious soldier through the field toward the house they had targeted. In the distance, the music continued to play, the ruckus of the men carrying far into the night.

  “I’m assuming you checked this house out already,” Ryker said to Noah. He was breathing heavy. They all were.

  “Yeah. I knocked and no one answered,” Noah said. “Checked the windows, too.”

  When they got to the door, Skylar kicked it in and then shoved her way through, flicking on the flashlight she took from the Jeep they’d parked nearby. The flashlight worked, the light amber colored but weak. She tapped it a couple of times, got a steady beam, then quickly cleared the home. Out back, by a rusted out barbecue, she found an oil lamp with some oil in it.

  Heading back inside, she said, “Who’s got the lighter?”

  Noah pulled it out of his pocket and she lit the wick. The lamp glowed bright. She gave the knob a twist and the living room brightened. Ryker was already bringing in a chair from the kitchen.

  “Sit him down,” Ryker said.

  Logan wrestled the man to the chair, sat him down and slapped him in the face twice until he roused.

  The dazed soldier began speaking Spanish, mumbling something unintelligible before becoming alert to his situation. After that, he quietly began asking for mercy.

  Noah walked over to him, bent down and said, “We don’t understand the things coming out of your face. This is America, so you can speak English.”

  The man cringed hard, shrinking away from him. He then hit Noah with a horrified, sideways stare.

  “Looks like the torture’s already begun,” Ryker muttered, referring to Noah’s breath. Skylar and Logan snickered to themselves.

  When Logan finally composed himself, he started conversing with the man in Spanish. They all looked at him funny, not realizing he was bilingual. Not that he used it much. In truth he was rusty, but not so rusty that he couldn’t get by. Despite the chance to converse in his native tongue, the captured soldier sat there tight lipped and defiant.

  “Noah, go breathe on him again before Logan gets pissed and starts beating on him,” Ryker said. “The shit smell of your mouth is a cruelty greater than either the belt or the fist at this point.”

  “If you can create a toothbrush from thin air,” Noah grumbled, “then I’d be happy for you to produce it. If not, shut your pie hole, or do something productive.”

  “Just give him a blast furnace taste of that esophagus exhaust,” Ryker chided. “This ain’t a romantic interlude, it’s torture 101.”

  Noah turned and walked over to the man, then leaned in his face and exhaled long and slow, causing the man to cry out. Logan, Skylar and Ryker started laughing, unable to believe what they were seeing.

  Finally, the man said, “No mas, no mas.” No more, no more.

  “So I’m going to beat on you with fists,” Logan said in Spanish, “and the second you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’m going to send gramps here in to start kissing you. Mouth to mouth until you vomit.”

  “Please,” he said in English, “I’ll tell you anything you want to know, just no…no more.”

  He was legitimately crying at that point.

  Logan began to question him. Unfortunately, the man reverted to silent defiance. Instead of bringing in Noah, however, Logan found it more useful to start cranking on him. He punched the man in the ribs with some very big, very brutal strikes, the kind that left the man sagging in his chair, but still he kept quiet.

  Ryker picked him back up, held him straight in the chair and said, “Give it to him again. Make it count this time.”

  They say the most congenial prisoners are the ones who start with good manners and cooperation, but they are also the prisoners who either break right away or take a ton of time and torture to crack.

  This guy was the latter.

  After awhile, when it became clear that he could take a beating and still not say anything, Logan stood, stretched his back and shook the man’s blood off his fists. Somewhere along the way, Logan had developed a wicked clenching in his bowels.

  He leaned down, face-to-face with this man, and looked in his trembling eyes. He was still in there. Logan then grabbed him by the back of his hair and tightened his grip. The prisoner winced, a dead giveaway that he wasn’t completely numb. He then twisted his grip, pulling the man’s head back so he knew he had his attention.

  “You screwed up when you didn’t tell me what I wanted to know,” Logan snarled. “I warned you. I said this would happen. By the time the old man’s done with you, you’re going to wish you told me everything.”

  After what Logan and Ryker put the prisoner through, he had that look like he could finally take Noah’s breath in stride. Unfortunately, that’s not what Noah had in mind for the man and Logan knew it.

  Behind him, Noah said, “Skylar, will you find me a broom handle and some scissors please?”

  “No problem,” she replied.

  Logan left the man, wandering back into the bathrooms, looking for toilet paper. He searched two bathrooms before he found a linen closet with half a roll and two bars of soap. He gathered up all three items, dropped the soap on the table by the broken front door and looked back at the three of them with the SAA prisoner.

  Mother nature was no longer calling, she was pounding on Logan’s back door. Besides needing a break, there was no joy in this for him. Torture wasn’t his thing, even though to some it might appear otherwise. By the looks on the faces of the others, there was no joy in it for them either. In times of war, however, you chase down every lead, and you work every source. This man was now their only lead, their only way of finding out what the SAA’s planned movements were. If they could get that much from him, they could also find out how many more convoys were en route. What it came down to was they needed to know if the entire Army was going to converge on Five Falls, or if this was merely a light expedition force they could deal with as a town.

  In the living room, under the steady light of the oil lamp, Noah was cutting off the man’s clothes. He was saying, “When I get his pants off, I’m gonna need that broom handle, Skylar. Oh, and put a little spit on it, it’ll go in easier that way.”

  The prisoner’s eyes got wide as he looked back at Noah. The old man grinned, like he was amused, then he turned to Logan and said, “Where the hell are you going?”

  He held up the toilet paper and said, “Fire in the hole.”

  Noah nodded, then said, “You go slay that brown dragon, but when you’re done, if this method doesn’t get us the answers we’re looking for, I think it’ll be time to start cutting off fingers.”

  “Roger that,” Logan said, flashing back to memories of Bronx.

  Returning his attention t
o the nearly naked, now gagged SAA soldier, Noah said, “Alright let’s get his undies off, too, then we’ll turn him over and find out if he’s into chicos or chicas. Skylar, time to spit on that broomstick. No need for generosity. This future sissy is going to tell us everything he knows or we’re going to turn him into a human poopsickle.”

  Logan walked outside gingerly, undoing his belt with every step. He wasn’t far when he heard the screaming start inside the house. That shrill, blood-curdling sound was enough to keep the groundhog in its hole. He walked far away from the house, a good fifty yards before dropping his trousers and popping a squat.

  In the distance, he studied the lights of the convoy, heard the distant sounds of music competing with the man’s tortured cries.

  He slayed that brown dragon indeed, then wiped and put himself back together. That’s when he saw movement in the field ahead. Cursing, he dropped back down. A couple of guys were calling out to someone named Abelardo.

  “Oh, for the love of Jesus,” he grumbled.

  Did they have Abelardo?

  Was that the name of their prisoner?

  They never asked the man his name, but if they did, Logan was sure he would have responded to Abelardo.

  Logan checked the distance between the house and where these two men were walking out into the field. They were close enough that he couldn’t reach the door before they reached him.

  “¡Abelardo!” the lead man called out “¿Donde esta, cabrón?”

  Two things were happening in that moment. First, he was still squatting down and smelling the slayed dragon. And two, he was kind of freaking out because all he had for a weapon was his blade.

  Fortunately, in that moment, their prisoner was no longer screaming. Any minute though, he’d start up again, alerting the men to his whereabouts.

  The SAA men had flashlights they were using to sweep over the land. That’s when the light fell over him and the two guys got really excited, one of them telling Logan to get down and stay down. He saw the soldier’s gun trained on him and knew the man was serious.

  Inside the house, Abelardo let out the most high pitched squeal. The men were now on high alert, the one using hand signals to tell the other to split up.

  Abelardo stopped screaming.

  On his knees beside the poop and the wads of toilet paper, Logan raised his hands as the soldier instructed.

  The guy wasted no time closing the distance on him.

  Logan’s shirt was covering his blade, but a quick pat down would reveal it. He felt the beam of the flashlight hit his eyes hard. Squinting, he covered his face with one hand and let the other drop slowly toward the weapon.

  In that moment, he wanted to shake his head in disgust, or shame for what he was planning, but he dared not make a wrong move.

  When the guy started rattling off in Spanish, Logan said, “¿Ingles?” and the guy went on a fiery tirade of insults Logan recognized. But then the SAA soldier turned to his buddy and said something Logan understood.

  His partner crouched down, rifle at his side. He was moving on the house. Logan saw everything happening in that moment. In his mind, he knew that the second he opened that door and saw what was going on inside, the soldier would open fire and kill all of Logan’s friends.

  He knew this as clear as day.

  Skylar.

  The soldier turned to him and, in English, he asked, “What are you doing out here?”

  Logan lifted the toilet paper roll to the man, almost like a peace offering, or a gift. To these guys, maybe it was both.

  “Peace offering,” Logan said, giving the roll a little shake.

  What the SAA man didn’t understand as he moved in to possibly take it, or just kill him, was that Logan was nearly fluent in Spanish, even if he let on that he wasn’t. So when the guy stepped forward and laughingly told his buddy they now had toilet paper, Logan snatched up his pile of feces and flung it in the man’s face.

  No sooner did the slop fly was he on the man, dragging him to the ground and smearing more feces in the soldier’s eyes, nose and mouth. He was coughing, gagging and dry heaving when Logan swiped the last of his dirty hands on the man’s uniform.

  Unable to clean his filthy hand any further, he tore his knife from its sheath and in one swift move, buried the blade in the man’s throat. He twisted the blade hard, then tore it out sideways, severing all number of arteries, tendons, cartilage and muscle.

  Inside the house, Logan heard the screaming man start up again. With no time to waste, he grabbed the dead man’s rifle and stitched a line of bullets up the front of the house. His counterpart had been about to enter the house, but he ducked down and spun, startled that his buddy was shooting at him.

  The second he did that, a body charged him from inside the house, drilling him in the midsection and taking him down in the dirt and weeds below. He was left no chance to recover before taking a jailhouse shanking from Skylar’s blade.

  “Are you nuts?” she said, kneeling over the man she’d just stabbed to death. She was referring to him shooting the gun and possibly alerting SAA forces.

  “I just saved all your asses, dummy!” he hissed, standing up and heading her way.

  The two of them were quiet, their eyes on the glowing lights of the convoy. That’s when they saw the shadows of several men leaving the safety of the convoy circle and heading their way.

  Logan rushed up to the house, blade in hand, wiping the fecal waste on the grassier parts of the ground. Mentally, he was trying to deal with the fact that crap would be in between his fingers, in his nail beds, in the creases and crevices of his hand.

  When he went inside, Noah was beside the prisoner, talking in his ear, the bloody scissors in his hands. The man was bent over the chair with the broom stick up his ass and a halfway snipped-open scrotum hanging lower than it should. One of his balls had been pulled out.

  Logan turned away quick, his entire body aching at the sight.

  “Yeah, this guy’s not new to torture,” Ryker said, giving Noah a nod. Ryker’s face looked extra white. “Everything okay outside?”

  “Thanks for the help,” Logan grumbled.

  “I think I’m more disturbed than I’m letting on,” Ryker said. “I’m just waiting for the shock to set in. Or maybe it already has.”

  “Well snap out of it,” Skylar barked. “We have company.”

  Noah looked up from his running chatter in the man’s face and said, “I got this. Go secure the perimeter.”

  Ryker was slow to move. Skylar was not. She was already out the door. Logan clapped his hands together hard, startling the man.

  “Let’s go!” Logan shouted.

  Ryker finally came to attention. The two of them drew their blades, grabbed their pistols and set out into the darkness.

  “Where’s Skylar?” Ryker asked.

  “Doing our job for us,” Logan hissed, his tone both harsh and abrupt.

  “She can probably do it better than us anyway,” Ryker mumbled. “You’ve seen her in action, right?”

  “If you’re going to be with her,” Logan said, ignoring the question, “then don’t spout that garbage. Just be there for her, man.”

  “That Noah,” Ryker said as they trotted through the fields to join Skylar and head off trouble, “he’s a real peach.”

  “Whatever we thought we knew about him,” Logan said, “I’m learning it’s way worse.”

  “The way he just shoved that broom—”

  “No,” Logan snapped. “Don’t say it. I don’t want to hear it, not now or ever.”

  “And he cut—”

  “Stop!” he commanded.

  Ahead, a dozen SAA men ambled out into the field. Without highway maintenance crews, the grasses there were waist high, good for cover if you could stay low.

  Ryker and Logan were healed enough from their injuries to run in a crouch, but neither man was exactly limber those days. That’s when they saw one man go down in the lightly illuminated grass ahead, and a scuffle take
place.

  “Holy crap,” Ryker whispered. “She’s already there!”

  A nearby man went to help his buddy, but he got a blade in the gut, and that’s when Skylar came up, ripped out the knife and drove it up under his chin.

  Gunfire broke out. So much for stealth.

  Ryker and Logan were now in a dead sprint, firing on the converging men as they went after Skylar. The men surrounded her, but she moved quickly, firing on them as she went, and stabbing those closest to her.

  Ryker and Logan crashed into the mix of them fast, catching some of the preoccupied SAA men off guard. Skylar had already taken out five of them by the time he and Ryker arrived. They dealt with the rest of them, collected up the weapons, then turned and sprinted back to the house.

  “We’re blown, thank you very much!” Skylar yelled at them as they ran.

  They heard the music in the distance stop and things got real in that second. By the time the three of them made it to the house, Noah was really leaning on the prisoner, his shrieking fast becoming the kind of noise Logan knew would forever haunt him.

  “We need to go NOW!” Logan said.

  Noah stopped immediately, grabbed the oil lamp and threw it against the wall. The second the wall and a pair of drapes caught fire, Noah joined them.

  Abelardo screamed for mercy, begging that they not leave him there, but there wasn’t an ounce of compassion left between them. Not after seeing what they had seen, and not knowing what they knew was coming for them.

  The four of them piled in the Jeep, Logan at the wheel. He started the Jeep, put it in gear, then smashed the accelerator. A pair of headlights shined across the field, the vehicle bounding after them like it was climbing through the gears rather quickly.

  “Tell me you got something out of him or this was all for nothing!” Logan yelled at Noah in the backseat.

  “I got all I needed,” Noah said, holding his hand.

  “If you got what you wanted,” Ryker screamed, the shock apparently there now, “why the hell were you leaning on that broom stick when we got back?”

  “He bit my damn finger!”

  “Do you really blame him?” Logan growled, his temper getting away from him.