The girl had been kept with a number of other people who had fled when her father rescued her, and was able to escape when the cannibals tried to recapture all the escaping victims.
The cannibals had barricades on both I-65 and Highway 145, and there were a large number of guards on them. Our primary goal wasn’t to rescue the people they’d taken; our goal was to kill the cannibals. Sure, we wanted to free whoever we could, but we wanted to permanently end their threat even more.
The main force went up I-65, with a smaller group taking Highway 145. Once the main attack started, they were supposed to hit the barricade on Highway 145. That would still leave the northern barricades on both roads, but we’d try to scoop them up as we finished the attack on the car dealerships.
As night fell, we went into the woods on the east side of I-65 to move forward into our attack positions. Although the forest wouldn’t get us all the way to the dealerships, it would get us close.
“Why don’t you go walk ahead of us a bit?” the leader of the attack, a man named George Jacobs, asked after a few minutes of being in the woods. Jacobs also happened to be the chief of police for Clanton in his day job. A burly man of average height, I’d already seen that he could pass for Santa Claus when he was happy…or a grizzly bear when he wasn’t. These days, I was sure he needed to be much more of the latter, and he was good at it. Apparently, he’d been a submariner back before the war, but had come home in time to avoid being caught in it when the missiles started flying.
“What for? So you can talk about me?” I asked with a smile. Although I thought they were being straight with me, I’d pretty much lost my belief in the goodness of humanity by this point. Even if they had decided to kill me, I didn’t figure that would happen until after the second attack, so I wasn’t really worried—much—about what they were going to say.
“No,” Jacobs said, “so we don’t run into an ambush. Militaries have a point man in front of the rest of the squad; I’m nominating you to be our point man.”
“Why me?” I asked. “Why don’t you go?”
“Because on my best day, I’m not half as quiet as you. They’ll hear us coming a long way off. You? You’ll probably sneak right up on any sort of ambush before they hear you coming.”
I hadn’t really recognized it, but now that he’d called my attention to it, I realized I was a lot quieter than they were. It wasn’t something I was intentionally doing…my feet just kind of came down naturally quiet and avoided stepping on things that would make a noise of their own accord.
“Being loud now isn’t going to change my opinion,” Jacobs said.
“What do you mean?”
“You were as quiet as a mouse, right up until I mentioned it to you, but then you got as loud as the kids.”
“I hadn’t realized I was doing that,” I said. So, when I didn’t think about it, I was quiet, but when I wanted to be really quiet, I thought about it and was noisier. I shook my head, not sure how best to resolve the conundrum. Weird. My subconscious was better at tradecraft than my conscious mind.
I moved to the front of the formation, consciously trying to be unconscious about what I was doing, and periodically having some success at it. As we approached where the barricade was on I-95, I became even better at my woodcraft—I was too worried about the people out on the road to think about moving through the woods. I kept my attention on them, and my other senses helped me navigate through the trees. I even felt confident enough to motion the rest of the group to stop, while I checked out the barricade.
I moved like a ghost to the edge of the forest and reconnoitered the situation, getting a good count of the men and their positioning. I was feeling pretty good about my skills as I stood up to leave…
But then one of the men at the barricade had to pee—I was close enough to hear him say it—and he walked straight toward me. I edged further back behind the tree where I was sheltering, praying nothing was sticking out that he could see. He walked to the edge of the trees, unzipped, and let fly, using the tree I was hiding behind as his target.
Which was okay…until he started spraying it around from side to side as if painting the tree. Apparently, at least part of my backside was sticking out to where it could be seen, and I felt the stream hit me several times as he worked the flow back and forth. I forced myself not to move, and I swear I heard a giggle from deeper in the forest, but the man couldn’t hear it over the impact of his urine on the tree.
After what was probably only 20 seconds, but what seemed like an eternity, the man finished, zipped up, and went back to the barricade, allowing me to sneak back to the group.
“Hey, Pissboy!” one of the men whispered. “Did you get a good count of how many people had to go to the bathroom up there?”
I started toward him, intent on…I’m not sure what, but two of the men grabbed me. “Quiet,” Jacobs said, pulling me to where I had to look into his eyes, dimly visible in the moonlight. “Ignore him and focus.”
I tried to pull away, but he had a grip like a vice. “Let it go,” he said.
I took a deep breath and let it out quietly, focusing myself. “Okay,” I said. He relaxed slightly, and I pulled away. I gave the offender another glance just to let him know we weren’t through yet, then returned to the point.
“How many are there at the barricade?” one of the men asked. He was the leader of the team that would hit the barricade, and I had forgotten to brief him about what I’d seen. I gave him a quick update on manning and positioning at the barricade, then started off again with the rest of the group.
The forest opened up just past the barricade, and we came upon a house. It was dark and didn’t look lived in, so we continued past it. Thankfully, if it were lived in, the owners didn’t have any dogs to alert them. At the end of their driveway ran a road that passed perpendicularly. After scanning it for a few moments, I led the group across it. The forest dropped down to almost nothing, just a line of trees that served to screen another house from the highway.
Unlike the earlier house, though, not only was this one lived in, there were people awake within it, and it looked like there was a party going on inside it.
I kept an eye on the house as we moved quietly down the line of trees, going slowly from one to the next. I reached the end of the trees—it bordered on a giant lot full of cars no one could drive anymore—in time to see a group of people moving from the car dealership to the house. As I watched, I realized it wasn’t a group going to the house; it was six men, dragging along another man and woman. Both were fighting and trying to get away, but it looked like their arms were tied behind their backs and they had to have been gagged—as much as they were fighting, they would have been yelling, if they could.
In a flash, it dawned on me—the group in charge of the cannibals had obviously taken over the house next to the car dealership, and were using it as their headquarters. Although it was a single story ranch house, it was built on top of a hill and had a basement. I could see a garage door under the house, toward which the two prisoners were being dragged.
A red haze came over my vision, and I realized I couldn’t let what was about to happen actually occur. It wasn’t that I didn’t want it to happen; I absolutely couldn’t let it happen.
I worked my way over to Jacobs. “You guys go on with the assault,” I whispered. I indicated the people going into the house. “I’m going to take care of that.”
“Our mission is to kill the cannibals, not set people free,” he whispered back. Even though low, his voice was intense. “We don’t have the people to spare for another target.”
“I know that,” I said. “That’s obviously their headquarters, and I’m guessing it’s full of the cannibals. There may be more there than anywhere else! You want me to help kill cannibals? That’s what I’m going to do!”
Somehow Jacobs had missed the fact that those were the cannibals; perhaps he hadn’t seen where they came from. After a second, though, he nodded, realizing what I said was
true. “Okay,” he said. “Do you want help?”
“No,” I replied. “I’ve got this.” Realizing I had no idea what was inside the house, I added, “But please swing by after you’re finished in case I need it.”
He nodded once, and I ran across the yard toward the basement entrance. There was one window on the end of the house that someone could have seen me through, but it was one of the few that were currently dark.
Reaching the house, I shielded my watch as I flipped on the light to check the time. I still had 10 minutes until the attack was scheduled to begin. I squatted between a bush and the side of the house, staying in the shadows. Every bone in my body strained to go—to save the people from something awful—but I knew I had to wait. Our attack was a multi-pronged assault; if I went early, I might screw it up for some of the other teams.
After waiting what I thought was 10 minutes, I checked my watch. Thirty seconds had passed. Shit. I sighed, steeling myself to patience.
And then the woman screamed, and before I could stop myself, I was in motion.
The basement garage had a roll down door, but it was open and I entered through it. The garage was surreal. Most of the things inside it looked like what you would have found in a normal garage before the Fall, although the number of barbeques—five—was more than most people would need. Then there were the implements to hold people hostage, as well as a wide variety of cutting tools sitting near a deep sink mounted on the wall. There wasn’t much light—only what was coming from under the door at the end of the garage—but there was enough for me to see they all had dark stains on them.
I set my rifle next to the door into the house, checked my pistol in its holster, and drew my knife. I was early, but maybe I could keep it quiet.
I tried the door; it was unlocked, and I opened it quietly. The room on the other side might have been a game room at some point; in the sick, twisted minds of the cannibals, it probably still was. The main features of the room were the two pool tables, upon which the prisoners had been tied after being stripped naked. The carpet had been removed from the floor and rolled up on one side of the room; it probably made cleaning up easier.
The man was already dead—that much was easy to see—but it appeared several of the men wanted to have some fun with the woman while she was still alive. One of the men was on top of her, while two more stood to the sides, cheering him on.
They didn’t see me approach; the first time they noticed my presence was when I reached around to draw my knife across one of the men’s throat. The resulting spray coated the woman and the man on top of her; I threw the man I had just killed to the side, and shoved the rapist off the woman and into the cannibal on the other side of the table. The rapist’s pants were still around his ankles, and the two men went down in a pile.
The woman screamed again, but I was pretty sure everyone in the house was used to the sounds of screaming from the basement—she’d done it several times before I entered—so I figured I was okay. I raced around the table to where the pantless man was trying to get up and stabbed him several times in the back. He collapsed onto the man under him, blocking the pistol he was trying to bring to bear. I stomped on his wrist, making him drop the pistol, then grabbed his hand and bent it around one handed while pushing the dead man off him with the other.
As the body rolled off, I rolled the cannibal onto his stomach with his arm twisted behind him. Holding it in place with a wrist lock, I said, “Quiet, unless you want me to kill you. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” the man said in a squeaky voice.
“Good. How many people are upstairs right now?”
“About ten,” he said.
“Are you sure?” I applied a little more pressure on his arm.
“Yes!” he hissed. “There are about ten people up there.”
“Thanks,” I said as I drove my knife through his heart.
“Why?” he asked, his voice weak.
“You’re a fricking cannibal,” I said. “What did you really think was going to happen?”
I let go of him, wiped off my knife, and used it to cut the woman’s hands free. She was a mess—beyond the blood sprayed on her—with cuts and bruises across her body.
“Thank you!” she cried as I released her arms.
She tried to hug me, but I pushed her back. “The time for thanks is later,” I whispered. “After we get you out of here.”
I freed her legs, and she ran to a pile of clothes and started trying to put them on. Unfortunately, they had cut her clothes off, leaving nothing in a condition to be worn except a pair of shoes.
“Take the shoes and get out of here,” I urged. “Run straight across the back yard to the stand of trees. Wait for me there. If I don’t come out, go south. There are other people out there who will help.”
“I want to help you,” she said.
“You’ll help me more if you leave,” I said, taking hold of her shoulder and guiding her toward the door. I opened it just in time to hear gunshots coming from outside. “Go!” I said, giving her a small push in the right direction. I grabbed my rifle and turned back toward the play room. I had a date with some cannibals.
It was time to bring some order to this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter Thirty
I could hear people racing around upstairs, and knew they’d heard the shots, too. While they might not be worried about it yet—who knew how often they shot someone here?—they soon would be. If they had any sort of communications devices, they would be getting the word that an assault was underway, and they’d react to it. I didn’t know whether they’d try to assist in repelling the attack, or if they’d fort up and prepare to defend the house, but I didn’t want to give them time for either.
I had just started up the stairs when the door opened, and two men came racing down the open, wooden steps. They were too close to shoot, so I did what I could and leaned forward covering up my head with my free hand, and stood up as they came down on top of me.
Neither of the men really had a chance to see me, so they didn’t realize I wasn’t one of their people, and the shouts they gave were more grunts of surprise as they tried to avoid me. One failed completely, and stepped onto my back—he was thrown off balance headfirst down the rest of the stairs after leaving a boot print on my left shoulder blade.
The second was almost able to stop himself, and a booted foot came down on either side of my head. I head-butted him in the groin as I stood while grabbing him and pulling backward. His hand scrabbled for the railing, and he almost saved himself, but I braced with my free hand, and lifted his feet off the steps. He went over me, managing to reach down and grab a handful of my shirt as he fell, pulling me along with him. Unlike him though, I still had control of my center of gravity and leaned forward to grab one of the stairs. He flipped over me and slammed into the stairs below us.
Knowing the others upstairs would have heard the thuds, I spun around to finish them off. The first man was done—he was at the bottom of the stairs with his head at an unnatural angle. The other was sliding slowly down the stairs on his back, stunned, his eyes pinched shut in agony.
“You guys okay?” a male voice yelled through the door at the top of the stairs.
“Uh, yeah,” I called, trying to mask my voice by making it deeper and mumbling slightly. I ran down several stairs, just in time for the man’s eyes to open as I stabbed him. His eyes went huge, and slowly dimmed as the light went out of them. Sheathing the knife, I started back up the stairs.
“Hey! You guys—” the voice from earlier yelled as someone moved into the doorway.
I had just reached the door, and I grabbed a handful of his shirt as he looked down at the men below, then pulled him down the stairs after them.
The “Woah!” he yelled ended abruptly as he face-planted into the stair frame. A loud crack indicated something was broken—hopefully another neck—but I didn’t have time to look.
A number of voices on the second floo
r were now asking questions. They were interested—not alarmed yet, but they knew something was odd—and my time was quickly running out.
“What the hell?” “What’s going on down there?” rang out from above me as I picked my rifle back up from the stairs.
I flipped off the safety and threw the rifle to my shoulder as I reached the top of the stairs. I saw that the stairway emptied into a kitchen, and as I came around the corner, I began firing as cannibals came into view. One woman at the sink; two rounds to the center of mass. I spun toward the table, and saw I was screwed—four men were sitting there, all facing the stairs. They were already in motion as I spun toward them, with the one closest lurching toward me blocking most of my shots at the rest of the group.
I fired at him and put two to his gut and one in his face as he dove at me, then I side-stepped, trying to get a shot at the others. One fled out the open door to the back porch. Although he wasn’t as much of a threat, I was already lined up on him so I fired twice; I thought at least one of them hit him.
I spun back in time to see the one on the left going around a corner into a hallway—too late to get a shot at him. The last man flipped the table on end, intending to use it for cover. While the thin wood provided him some concealment, it didn’t provide cover—in fact, it did nothing to stop my bullets as I shot him several times through it. He slumped, letting the table fall onto its face. I could see one of my rounds had hit him below his eye; he was done. The woman was similarly finished; she lay looking skyward, unmoving.
A noise from behind made me spin, and I found the guy who’d gone down the corridor. Apparently, the corridor wrapped around to the formal dining room behind me, and he’d tried to circle around while I was busy with his friends. He had his pistol out, and he came around the corner with his gun blazing as I threw myself to the side, firing a couple of times on the way down. Although the bullets didn’t hit him, they caused him to stop and dive back around the way he came.
Don't Call Me Ishmael Page 16
