Forsaken World:Coming of Age

by Thomas A. Watson

  Stepping out, he saw Ian coming from the kitchen. “These guys love alcohol, drugs, and chips,” he said, shaking his head.

  They moved around the house and found a game room, another library, and a master bedroom that had a bathtub they could swim in. Seeing a wallet beside the bed, Lance picked it up and opened it. “Hey, this is Bones’ wallet,” Lance said, looking at the license. The night before, he had put several faces with names as Don had called out on the radio. Don had been the big motherfucker in charge.

  Flipping through the wallet, he didn’t find anything interesting and put it down on the bedside table. Seeing a paperback book, Lance picked it up. “Yeah, he’s a sick fucker,” Lance said, looking at the title: Life of Ted Bundy. Flipping it open to where a book marker was, Lance chuckled and flipped toward the back. He carefully tore out a page then flipped a few more back and tore out another. “That will fuck with ya,” he chuckled and put the book back.

  Putting the pages in his pocket, Lance followed Ian out to the other rooms, and besides empty beer cans and whiskey bottles, they didn’t find much else. With Dino leading, they headed down to the basement.

  They stopped when they reached the bottom. It was pitch black. Ian lifted his AR, turning on the mounted light, and shined it on the wall until he found a light switch. He walked over, turned it on, and heard Lance suck in a breath through pursed lips.

  Ian spun around, and his eyes got wide as the AR slipped out of his numb hands. “What the fuck did they rob to get all these fucking guns?!” he snapped. The basement was packed wall to wall with guns, wooden crates, and fiberglass containers.

  “I don’t know, but we need to find a place like that,” Lance said, moving over to the stacks. He opened a wooden crate, saw cardboard tubes inside, and pulled one out. A pull tab was in the middle, and Lance pulled it off and took the top off. “Ian,” he said, turning around.

  Ian looked over as Lance held up a hand grenade. The smile fell off Lance’s face when Ian didn’t get excited. “These crates here have mines in them,” Ian said with more than a little fear in his voice.

  “Cheating fuckers, aren’t they?” Lance said, putting the top back on. He returned the grenade, closed the crate, and moved it over to the stairs.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m taking these. They have nine more. They need to share,” Lance said. He walked back and looked at the wooden crates beside Ian. “Claymore antipersonnel mine,” Lance read on the side. He grabbed the top crate and moved it over with the grenades.

  “We don’t know how to use those,” Ian said.

  “Yeah, but we can damn sure learn,” Lance said, coming back.

  Looking around the basement, they saw guns they didn’t know and took pictures of them. They found crates of Javelin rockets, and Ian wouldn’t let Lance take one, but Ian found a stack of crates of 40mm grenades. “Bloopers,” he said with a grin and carried two over to the stack.

  “Let’s get this shit out and leave,” Lance said, still mad he couldn’t take a Javelin.

  Ian looked around the room then over at Lance. “Have you seen any night vision?”

  Lance looked around and shook his head. “No and everyone should want that.”

  “Neither did I, and with all this stuff, there should’ve been night vision around,” Ian said, waving his hand at the piles of weapons.

  “We don’t need it,” Lance said, heading to the stairs.

  “Lance, I’m talking about them using it, not us.”

  Lance picked up a crate and started up the stairs. “Fine with me if they don’t have it.”

  Disarming the grenade at the sliding door, they carried the crates outside and moved the grill back to where it came from. “Ian, you feel good about going to get the buggy with Dino while I lock the house up?” Lance asked, wiping his face.

  “Yeah, see you in a second,” Ian said, patting his leg for Dino to follow. When Ian was gone, Lance ran back down to the basement and pulled one of the fiberglass crates labeled Javelin out to the porch.

  Closing the back door, he rearmed the grenade and ran back upstairs. Every door into the house had a booby trap on it and as Lance was climbing out the window, he wondered how Bones got in. Dropping down off the roof, Lance moved around the front of the house and saw the solar panels on the south-facing slope and a building beside them he was taking for the battery house. In the middle of the yard was a large, burned area, and Lance knew why it was there.

  He turned to look at the front of the house, and on the front door, a circle with two lines on the top and a triangle at the bottom was spray painted on the door.

  “I’ve seen that before,” Lance said and grinned. Realizing what he was looking at, he mumbled, “It’s their brand; it’s a devil.”

  Glancing around one last time, he ran to the backyard and didn’t wait long as Ian drove up on the buggy. “I can’t believe you got a Javelin,” Ian said, coming to a stop.

  “I already armed the house, so it has to come,” Lance grinned.

  They loaded the stuff up and drove up the draw until they topped the ridge. “Let’s get this scouting trip done,” Ian said, looking over at Lance.

  “Did you see the front door?”

  “The kid’s drawing of a devil?” Ian said, raising his eyebrows.

  “Yeah, we saw a house yesterday with one on the door,” Lance said then pulled out his drinking tube and sucked down some water. Dino came over and pushed Lance with his head. “Alright, hold on, Dino,” Lance said, pulling a bowl out and pouring Dino some water from his tube.

  As Lance filled Dino’s bowl, Ian sat thinking about what Lance said. “Yeah, you’re right. It was painted on a door. It was on that house up that draw, alone just like this one.”

  “It wasn’t marked with a black push pin,” Lance said, clipping his drinking tube back to his vest.

  “Huh,” Ian said, shaking his head.

  “I’ll explain later,” Lance said, pulling out his map. It wasn’t marked, but Lance pulled out a clear sheet of plastic with numbers and laid it over the map. “House fifty-four,” he said and reached back, grabbing the tablet and turning it on. He flipped through the folders until he got to fifty-four. Tapping it, a picture opened, and sure enough, there was the same figure spray-painted on the front door.

  Ian looked over and nodded. “We can stop there on our way back,” he said and drove down the ridge then turned down the slope.

  It was just after one when they stopped for lunch, and Lance was driving now since he had missed three times shooting at stinkers they came across in the woods. He had shot over seventy before Ian got his turn.

  Lance shoved food in his mouth and tossed some over to Dino. “You only have one more miss,” he said, pulling his drinking tube to his mouth, and he realized his hydration bladder was empty. Giving a sigh, he got out and dug in his rucksack then pulled out two one-liter bottles of water. Taking off his small backpack, he opened the bladder up and poured them in.

  “I’m at eighty-six,” Ian said with a grin.

  “Yeah because all of yours have been close,” Lance said, tossing the empty bottles in the buggy. “We didn’t see any more spray-painted markings, and house one ninety-four was back up a draw all by itself.”

  “Lance, we’re done scouting section one. We’re heading there when we leave, and we’ll find out. The house is barely a half mile from us,” Ian said, tossing Dino some food.

  Packing the MRE bag up and stuffing it in his rucksack, Lance pulled out his camera and started flipping through pictures until he came to the ones of the map loaded with push pins. “It is marked on the map with a yellow push pin,” he said, turning off the camera.

  “There are like four more yellow pins in section two,” he said, putting the camera back in his vest.

  “You want to check on that house where we found survivors?” Ian asked, stuffing his empty MRE bag in his rucksack.

  “Yeah, but this time, let’s come at them from the back. We can par
k behind the ridge and sneak over,” Lance said, dropping behind the steering wheel.

  Checking his rifle, Ian climbed in. “We’re off to see the wizard,” he said as Lance slowly drove off. It wasn’t long until Dino stopped looking ahead, and Ian climbed out, bringing his rifle up.

  Lance grabbed the binoculars and looked ahead at a teenaged female stinker slowly walking up the slope. “Wonder what she saw?” he mumbled, looking at the teen stinker. Ian squeezed the trigger just as the stinker stepped, and the bullet hit her ear. “Finally,” Lance sighed, getting out, and Ian took a second shot, taking the girl’s head off.

  “Bitch can’t even walk straight,” Ian huffed, walking past Lance and getting behind the steering wheel.

  When Lance climbed in, they eased down the hill and pulled to the back of the house they were going to check out, stopping a hundred yards away. Before they got out, they looked at Dino and saw him standing with his tongue hanging out.

  With Lance leading and Dino beside him, they moved down to the house. They stopped in the backyard and looked at the house. All the windows and doors were intact, which wasn’t unusual. About half the houses they scouted looked undisturbed.

  A small shed was in the backyard, and they headed to it first and didn’t find anything unusual. Lance looked at the house and pointed to the roof over the back porch. “Give me a boost, and I’ll look at that window up there to see if I can get in,” he whispered.

  Ian gave a nod, moved up to the house, and leaned against the wall as Lance climbed up his back and stood on his shoulders. Pulling himself up, Lance eased over to the window and found it cracked. “I’m starting to see a pattern here,” he said, looking in and around the window, but he didn’t see any wires.

  Climbing in, he found the room like the other one: female upper body parts on a dried, bloody floor. The only difference was these body parts were rotting. Covering his mouth, Lance moved out of the room, down the stairs, and stopped. Cases of supplies were stacked everywhere.

  Mumbling, Lance moved to the back door and found a grenade wired to the handle. Taking the wire off the knob, he opened the door, letting Ian and Dino in. “It’s loaded with supplies,” he said, closing the door.

  They moved through the house, taking pictures as they went, and found all the rooms downstairs and upstairs packed with supplies. The only exception was the room Lance came in with the rotting body parts. “This is like a supply house,” Ian said.

  “Yeah, like our dads did with that container they buried. In case something goes wrong, we have something,” Lance said, then his mouth fell open. “It was marked with a yellow pin, and there were a bunch of those.”

  “They may be stupid, but in this, it seems they are smart,” Ian said. “This is food, ammo, medicine, water, and all kinds of shit here.”

  “I think for all of their houses, we will have to come in the on the second floor,” Lance said. “It can’t be a coincidence that the room I came in looked just like the one at Bones’ house. I think they do that to scare off anyone who tries to break in.”

  Thinking about it and looking at the front door wired with a grenade, Ian nodded. “Makes sense, but cut off titties and laying them on the floor doesn’t scare me; it makes me sick and pissed off.”

  “So are we going to start deeds on these guys?”

  Taking a deep breath, Ian grinned. “Only seems fitting to show them what a real pain in the ass is.”

  “Okay,” Lance said, moving over to some boxes and taking two.

  “That’s medicine and wax,” Ian said as Lance opened the back door, setting them on the porch. “You sick?”

  “No, but I need my supplies for the jackasses,” Lance said. “You want to climb out or carry boxes?”

  “I’ll climb out,” Ian said.

  After Lance left, Ian rearmed the door and headed upstairs, covering his mouth as he darted to the window and climbed out. He heard Lance’s rifle cough three times and looked over the side of the roof to see three stinkers lying on the ground.

  Ian lowered his body over the side until he was hanging from the roof and dropped to the ground. When he turned around, he saw Lance pulling one of the bodies to a burnt spot on the ground at the side of the house.

  Grabbing another one, Ian pulled it over, and they both grabbed the last one. “I hate the fat ones,” Lance said as they pulled the large stinker on top of the others.

  Ian pulled out his lighter and bottle of lighter fluid. “Shit, I don’t. They can barely move,” he said as he wet the group, and then he lit them up.

  Moving over to the porch, Lance grabbed the two boxes then followed Ian back to the buggy. After tying the boxes down, he climbed in, and Ian took the long way back home so they could get a look at the survivors they found the day before. When they came to a stop two hours later, Lance was at thirty-nine stinkers and no misses.

  Checking their gear, they left the buggy and eased up the slope to the ridge line several hundred yards ahead. Dino stayed in front of them, but unlike the day before, he didn’t block them. Lance stayed off anything that looked like a trail as he moved up the slope very slowly. Every few yards, he would look through the thermal mounted on his rifle. Not seeing hot spots, Lance moved on very slowly.

  Fifty yards from the top, he froze, eased down to his knees, and waved Ian up. When Ian was beside him, Lance pointed ahead at an area where the leaves looked wetter than those around them. Ian nodded and Lance moved up. Brushing the leaves aside, he looked down in the hole at a punji pit. He waved Ian up and pointed then covered the hole back up.

  If they moved slowly before, they crawled now, carefully looking for anything out of place. When they reached the top, they found a trail. Lance pointed at where it weaved around a tree, and more leaves were there than anywhere else on the trail.

  Ian nodded and moved up then carefully brushed the leaves away, and his eyes almost bugged out of his head. It was the biggest steel jaw trap he had ever seen. It had to weigh over fifty pounds with large, triangle teeth on each jaw. If anyone stepped in it, they were losing the leg.

  Turning his head, Ian motioned Lance up, and Lance stopped looking at the trap. He leaned over, putting his lips on Ian’s ear. “Number sixteen grizzly bear trap.” Ian nodded, only understanding what he was looking at: a trap that could take a leg off.

  Staying close to Dino, they moved over the crest and stopped, looking at a house and barn below them and through the trees. Pulling out cameras and binoculars, they scanned the area.

  They saw two men and two women standing at the barn with several kids moving around the backyard with two large dogs. Everyone but a toddler had a gun, and most had a bow, compound bow, or crossbow with them.

  After watching them for half an hour, Lance tapped Ian and motioned to leave. Grabbing gear, they slowly moved away and saw a tree stand. Not stopping to check it out, they moved as fast as they felt they could with traps around that could take your leg off.

  The sun was near the horizon when they reached the buggy. Not saying anything, they climbed in and headed home. Before they reached their ridge, Lance got another twenty-six to win for the day in their macabre game of killing stinkers.

  Topping their ridge, they had to pull out their goggles to make it home. “Coming home,” Lance called over the radio.

  “Area clear,” Jennifer called back.

  Inside, the girls and Jennifer followed them on the monitors as the two drove down to the cabin. When they reached the back fence, Jennifer and Carrie ran out to open the gates. When Lance and Ian were inside, they closed the gates with a sigh of relief. The group was together and safe for the moment.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Five days later, everyone was in the bunker, staring at the large map on the wall. It was now marked with what they had found. Section one to the west, section two to the south, three to the east, and four to the north.

  Hanging off one of the shelves was a map just like the map they had found at Bones’ house; Jennifer had put the
same colored pins as the map in the pictures. They knew black was a safe house that some of the gang stayed at sometimes. The only green pin marked the survivalists, and they could only figure that meant trouble. White pins meant survivors. The first survivors Ian and Lance found weren’t marked on the map.

  It wasn’t until they found a small group in section two and made the connection. Ian and Lance found another group of at least three families in section four that the gang hadn’t found. Just inside their three-mile corridor, there were four groups that the gang had found but hadn’t hit. They were under no illusions; Ian and Lance had found several houses that had been hit by the gang and even watched them attack a group of survivors.

  “Maybe it’s because they have a lot of weapons?” Jennifer said, moving over to the section of wall that had pictures of the gang hung up. On Bones’ computer, they found a shit load of pictures, and Bones was good enough to label them with names. Listening to the radio, they had figured out the hierarchy. Now, the pictures hung on the wall with Boss Hogg at the top.

  When the boys left, Jennifer went over what they found and organized it. Lance and Ian looked at the pictures one night after they got back and found a picture of Boss standing beside Don. They knew how big Don was, and Boss could lick salt off his head. Not only was Boss taller, he was twice as wide. Boss had a gut, but it wasn’t big, and he wasn’t fat.

  “Jennifer, you’ve seen the pictures of all the weapons they have stored at the two safe houses. Shit, I’m almost worried about what they have,” Ian said, looking over at the wall of pictures. The one thing in common in all the pictures was all of them had evil, dead eyes. There was no compassion on any of their faces.

  “I’m just suggesting,” she said with a sigh.

  “Well, keep on because I can’t think of shit,” Ian said, making her grin.

  Lance walked up to the map, looking at the second safe house in their three-mile perimeter. “Okay, Hoot stays here sometimes,” he said, pointing at the map where the other safe house was. “And Bones stays here sometimes,” he said, pointing at the first one he and Ian visited.