by Hunt, Jack
“Oh shut up,” Izzy said.
Each of us found a place. Specs leaned up against the counter. Izzy, Jess, and Caitlin sat on the floor. Dax immediately went into military mode and started looking for anything that could get us out of our zip ties. I just waited until they shut the door before I pulled out the knife and squeezed it between my palms.
“Anyone want to give me a hand?”
“No, but I’m sure there’s a toy for that,” Baja muttered as he glanced at the various packaged gadgets lined up on shelves.
Jess jumped up, she turned her back and took a hold of the knife and then started to move it back and forth. It was tough as it was only a butter knife and the zip ties were made of a thick plastic. Though within a matter of about five minutes she had managed to cut through. I rubbed my wrists and did the same for the others. However, it was a little easier this time.
Ralphie sat quietly in the corner. I think he knew what was about to happen. As soon as Dax was out of his restraints he had Ralphie up against the wall.
“You knew damn well what you were leading us into.”
“I told you to go around. But you wouldn’t listen to me.”
“Start talking. Who are these people? What do they want?” Dax hollered.
“And more importantly, was that really human flesh?” Specs asked.
“Alright I see you have that handled. I’m going to look for weapons while you guys work it out.” Baja strolled off into the darkness of the store.
“Are you even from this town?” Jess asked.
“Yes. But they’re not.”
“So what happened?” I asked.
“They were already here when the outbreak kicked off. That’s when they shot a cop and took over.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“They…” he stuttered.
“Spit it out, man.” Dax was getting angrier by the second.
“They have my sister.”
There was silence.
“The one you said was dead?” I asked.
“I had two. One of them my father killed, the other was taken by them.”
“Who are they?”
“Some cult. I don’t know what it is they believe. I remember them being in the town. They kept to themselves. I didn’t know they were messed up in the head. I just thought they were another religion. Heck, I believe but not what they do.”
Dax still had a tight grip on him. His jacket was pushed right up to his face.
“Ease off, Dax,” I said. “Dax, let him go.”
“And the meat?” Specs asked.
“Human flesh. Zombie flesh? How else do you think they can survive out here?”
Jess doubled over. “Oh god, I think I’m gonna be sick.”
“So the whole gas station is just a ploy to lure people in?”
He nodded. “Listen, guys, I would never purposely try to harm you.”
“Shut up,” Dax added.
We stood there in the dark contemplating our next move.
“We need to get out of here. Get our weapons.”
“Speaking of weapons, I think I found some,” Baja said coming out the back waving around two thirteen-inch dildos. Specs palmed his own forehead.
“No, I’m serious. Add the cords from those vagina balls over there and I could make myself a mean pair of nunchucks. And fuck ’em up real good. No pun intended.”
“Baja. This is not the time.”
But it was too late. Waving them around, he lost his grip on one of them and it hit Izzy in the face. “Oh shit,” he muttered.
“Oh shit, indeed, Baja, I’m going to ram this up your ass.”
We continued to get more information from Ralphie while Izzy chased Baja around the store, wielding an oversized lifelike cock.
“Why the hell are they eating humans?” Jess asked.
“They see this whole thing as a gift from their god. Z’s killing humans. Another form of manna from heaven.”
“Ah man, why do we always have to meet the freaks?” Specs said, taking a peek outside the blinds to see if anyone was coming.
“I would have told you sooner but my sister…”
“So you did leave behind your sister?” I asked.
“I had no choice. They would have killed me too.”
Ralphie slumped down on the floor, tears began to roll down his cheeks.
“What now?” Jess asked.
“We need to get the guns, the truck, and get the hell out of freakville,” Dax said, already looking like he was about to charge out of there.
“Easier said than done.”
I wandered up and down the aisles trying to think. “There has to be a back entrance to this place.”
“Oh, there’s a back entrance.” Baja snorted as he rushed by.
“Yeah, and I’m about to find it,” Izzy hollered. Now most might have told them to settle down while we tried to figure this out. But we were so used to their demented antics it just became background noise — at least to me.
“Sit the fuck down,” Dax had reached his breaking point. I rarely saw him like that but when he was, you did what he said or found a good place to hide. Baja and Izzy scuffed their feet, swapping “we’ll settle this later” glances.
“How does this work?” I asked Ralphie.
“What do you mean?”
“Do they wait until you’re bitten before they use you for chow?”
“No. They feed you to those ugly bastards. Hell, they worship them.”
“What?” I stammered, unable to hide my disgust.
He moved over to the windows and pulled the blinds down. “You see that barn up there. Inside that is a hole. Everyone who has already turned is down there. They lower people down into it. They have this whole ritual that they do. It’s sick.”
“Dead, though?”
“No, alive. They lower people down alive. My brother broke his arm when this whole thing kicked off. Instead of letting him live, they lowered him down and let those flesh-eating monsters tear him apart. They do it just enough until they are dead, and then raise them back up. Before they turn they strip them of the flesh. That’s what you were eating.”
“Holy fuck.”
It was hard to imagine, but then again, there had been cults that had done far worse things to people even when there was no apocalypse.
“When do they do this?”
“As soon as they need more food. Who knows. Maybe tonight. Perhaps tomorrow. But we are going to end up on a plate.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Dax replied.
DEATH BY DILDO
As much as I didn’t like it, we had few options. Stripped of our weapons, we would now be stripped of our dignity. Like a scene from a badly filmed low-budget porno, we stood there kitted out in gear that would have made even a porn star blush.
Like any good battalion readying themselves for battle we had spent the past twenty minutes going up and down the aisles grabbing anything that could be used as a weapon. Trust me, I didn’t like it any better than anyone else. Though, Baja thought it was great that we had finally come to our senses and were listening to him.
Now hold on.
It wasn’t the case that we were actually following his bright idea, it’s just that we had exhausted all our other options. We ran through all manner of ideas as the hours passed. One of which was making a run back to city hall and hoping that they had the box of weapons still there, another was attacking them in their sleep. All of which meant exposing ourselves to risk, and all of them required us getting out first.
And getting out was the challenge. You see at that precise moment they were under the assumption that we were secured and locked up in the den of iniquity. The plan was to have the girls seated with their hands behind their backs to give the illusion that we were still tied. Baja wanted to vote on having Izzy and Jess fully naked to create more of a distraction.
Don’t worry; he eventually recovered from the kick to his nuts after coming up wi
th that idea.
The floor in front of the door would be covered in massage oil.
I know. It sounds like a gag you would see in an episode of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. But, seriously that stuff was as slippery as shit. After seeing how well it worked, I had tried to coerce Jess into giving me a back rub with it. But she just slapped me.
Now I would like to say that it was a good idea, but it was actually the result of an accident. Ralphie had toppled over a stack of the glass bottles. That’s the only reason there was a big bloody pool of the stuff spread out like a mini pond. The shattered glass was just an added bonus.
Baja stared down at the arsenal of weapons attached around his waist. “I swear this is some serious A-Team shit. Not even Hannibal could have come up with this.”
“I feel like a real dick,” Specs said.
“You look like one,” Dax replied.
There we were, ready to take on two or more heavily armed men with little more than a large selection of various sized dildos and Ben Wa steel balls. Now I know what you’re thinking. We were out of our minds? Look, to be fair we could have beaten them to death with a whole host of items on the shelves because there were lots of paddles, whips, chains, and various indigestible spiky items that looked as if they could do some serious damage. Why anyone would buy something like that for pleasure, though, was beyond me. But — each to their own.
The upside was, if we did manage to lure them into our asinine plan, and overcome them, we had plenty of rope and gag balls to keep them quiet.
“How did you guys talk me into this?” Ralphie asked.
I stood back to take a look at them all. I could barely keep myself together.
Besides the makeshift nunchucks that Baja insisted he make, he was sporting a black latex mask with a zipper for his mouth. Why? I’m still trying to figure that out.
Specs, he was protesting as to why he had to wear nipple clamps. Jess told him they looked threatening. Really, there was no reason, other than the fact we were all getting a kick out of it.
As for Ralphie, he just looked on as if he had entered an episode of The Twilight Zone.
Dax stood off to one side. There was no way on God’s green earth that he was going to touch any of that shit. Now I would like to say that was it, but just for added measure, Jess had armed Ralphie, Specs, and Baja with three hard black paddles. Each one had glow-in-the-dark words engraved on it. Ralphie’s said SLUT, Specs’s was SLAVE, and Baja was BITCH.
After seeing that I nearly lost it.
“Right, so everyone knows the plan. Let’s get to it,” Dax said, shaking his head in disbelief.
With no power, and the only light coming in from the moon outside, it offered the perfect amount of cover. They had positioned two men on the outside. Ralphie’s job was to try and convince them that he had information Isaac would want to know. He banged on the door. The men obviously had strict instructions not to open the door so they didn’t respond initially. That’s when it was proposed that I would start a fight with Ralphie. Of course we still had to pretend that our hands were tied. I began shoving Ralphie hard into the glass door.
“Keep that up, we’ll put a round in you,” one of the men said from the other side.
“You don’t understand, he’s trying to kill me. For the love of God and all things holy, help me.”
They weren’t stupid. When they cracked the door they didn’t rush in. They had small lights on the end of their assault rifles. As much as I found our plan amusing, this was deadly serious. One bullet was all it would take and it would be lights out. At the sound of the door creaking open we rushed back into the darkness of the room. The noise of our struggle was loud as we charged into aisles knocking over anything that wasn’t nailed down.
Their gun barrels swept around trying to pinpoint us as we moved back and forth. They had to enter if they wanted to get a better look at where all of us were positioned.
“Get on the floor. Now,” they yelled.
We ignored their commands and I pushed Ralphie into an aisle that was just out of view of the doorway. It was enough to make them think they could stop it. That’s when they ran inside. What happened next occurred fast.
Besides them slipping on the pool of oil.
Dax, Specs, and Baja had been either side of the doorway crouched down. The attack was fast, vicious, and I have to admit, downright sexy. It was only after I found out what the three of them had done that I laughed. Initially they didn’t attack the men; instead, they knocked the assault rifles out of their hands. After that they paddled and slapped them into submission. In many ways I was kind of glad I couldn’t see what was going on, as I was pretty sure I would have been in fits of laughter.
Izzy and Jess tied them up and put gag balls in their mouths. We tossed the rest of the ridiculous-looking items in a pile and snatched up the two assault rifles, three mags each, and a couple of Walther P22s.
“Now this what I call a weapon!” Dax looked happy again.
Dax snatched up a bag that he must have put together earlier. Glass rattled inside it. I had no idea what he had in mind but I knew we didn’t have long. We had been stuck inside that store for over four hours. It was just after two in the morning when we got out. Baja came out a few minutes after.
“What were you doing?”
“Just some final touches.” He smirked. I didn’t even want to know.
First order of business was finding the truck. The worst-case scenario we would have to hot-wire it. We needed our weapons back but we had already been low on ammo when they had taken them from us. Somehow I could tell Dax wasn’t ready to just bolt. The look on his face said it all. He had vengeance on his mind.
“Where do they stay?” Dax asked.
“Uh,” Ralphie replied.
Dax had his game face on. “Speak up.”
“The two houses.” He pointed towards the barn. “The farmhouses are close by, one beside the large barn and another is one field over.”
“They all live together?”
Ralphie shrugged. “That’s just what I remember.”
“Jess, Izzy, Specs, head over to city hall see if you can collect the weapons. Take Ralphie with you. If you find the truck, swing it around. Keep the lights off. Wait for us at the bottom of this street. Be ready to go.”
“What about my sister?” Ralphie asked.
“Do you know for sure that she’s still alive?” I asked.
“We are not going to risk any more lives,” Dax spat out.
“I don’t know. But I have to see.”
“Oh, you run from this town, and leave her behind and now you grow a fucking conscience?” Dax asked.
Ralphie shrugged. Dax shook his head in frustration. I could imagine what he was thinking when he looked at me. He probably thought I was going to give him heck if we didn’t at least try to find the girl.
“Alright, you come with us.”
Under the cover of night, we moved across the street and down a back alley. We could hear moaning. It was getting louder. No doubt coming from the barn. Ralphie led the way. It took us close to ten minutes to make it to a street that led up to the first farmhouse. The barn was a football field away. It was up on a steep hill overlooking the town. At night it looked ominous. Only the glow from the moon revealed its blood-red color. We could hear the sound of a few Z’s shuffling along in the forest. We waited until the coast was clear before we hopped over a fence and began our ascent to the barn. I had to hope that the others were okay.
When we made it to the barn door, we paused, glancing up at the house.
“This is a bad idea,” Dax said.
Ralphie unhooked the latch and opened the huge barn door. Dust and small pieces of hay filled the air. Inside the smell of horse shit permeated everything. That and the smell of death. The sound of moaning was loud but we couldn’t see shit.
It was like any typical two-story barn. Down either side were empty stables. Most of them were filled with haystacks. T
he sound of moaning was loud. It was pitch-black inside. We had only taken a few steps when Ralphie yanked us back. It was lucky we hadn’t gone any further. Dax turned on the small flashlight on the end of the assault rifle. He lowered it to the floor and then our eyes widened. In front of our feet was a giant sinkhole that went the full length of the barn. We were standing right at the edge. One more step and I would have fallen into a pit of snarling Z’s. There had to be over two hundred gnashing their teeth. Among them were fresh dead, their bodies barely decayed. No doubt they’d been killed that night. Most of the dead were missing body parts. Jaws hanging loose, stomachs torn out, and blood gushing from their mouths.
“Holy shit, they need a makeover,” Baja said.
Dax swept the light over their faces.
“Do you see her?”
“She’s not down there,” he said. Ralphie just stared down, mesmerized by the Z’s.
Caitlin remained silent.
“What do you think?” I asked Dax.
“Everyone out.” He grabbed hold of me. “Johnny, take Ralphie and Baja up to the house. Caitlin can stay with me. See if you can spot his sister. Don’t go in. The first sign of trouble you get out of there.” Dax tossed me his assault rifle.
“Roger that. What are you doing to do?”
“Just go. I’ll follow in a moment.”
I led the way. I turned back briefly to see Dax taking out of a bag a large glass bottle of massage oil from the store. What the fuck? I knew he was a kinky bastard but offering a full body massage to a Z? I shook my head and kept running towards the house.
“Dude, we’re never going to find her in there,” Baja said. “She’s probably doggy chow by now.”
“Shut the hell up!” Ralphie shot back.
We were just getting close to the house when a few bullets snapped past our heads. That was followed by floodlights turning on. No doubt powered by a generator. Immediately after the sound of a tornado siren began. It was so loud we could barely hear ourselves think.
“You think they could have bought a louder one?” Baja laughed, turning around and bolting.
I yanked Ralphie’s arm. “Let’s go.”
“No, my sister.”
“It’s not happening, man. I’m sorry.”
