Hell's Encore: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (This Dark Age Book 2)

by John L. Monk

  “Are you stupid or something?” Tony said, rising more carefully.

  Greg blinked in confusion. “What?”

  Tony glared at him, scowling in terrible fury, and Greg stepped back.

  “Jesus, Tony, what’s the matter?” he said.

  Tony appeared caught between a desire to throttle Greg or run away. Instead, he unclenched his fists and sobbed openly in a display Greg would never have thought possible from the notoriously tough kid.

  “I think I killed her,” Tony said.

  Greg chose his next words carefully. “Did you see … uh, did they shoot her?”

  Tony shrugged. “Probably. I just left her there.”

  “So, she might be alive?”

  He shrugged again.

  “All we heard was gunshots,” Greg said. “Could be she got captured.”

  Tony stared off to the side, slowly shaking his head. “I think they shot her. And Chelsea and Andrew, too. But definitely Sarah.”

  Out of nowhere, Greg felt angry. “What do you mean you killed her? You had nothing to do with it! I mean … if she died. And the others weren’t even there.”

  “If we stayed fishing like we were supposed to,” Tony said, “then everyone’d be alive!”

  “Oh, great, so it’s my fault.”

  “Didn’t say that. But now that you mention it … well, yeah … you are kind of guilty too. I mean, Jack put you in charge, right?”

  Unbelievable.

  “Uh huh. And you know who else is guilty?” Greg said hotly.

  “Who?”

  “Your grandparents, because they gave birth to your mom, and she had your fat ass, and then she died and left you to grow up on your own. So go ahead and blame them next, you stupid moron!”

  “Don’t talk about my mom!” Tony yelled and rushed him again.

  This time he didn’t slip—he crashed into Greg like a ton of bricks, big as he was, and they both went down. While Tony struggled to land punches, Greg—who’d been on the receiving end of Lisa’s self-defense lessons—squeezed the other boy close, crowding him out so he couldn’t land any good blows. He still got boxed around the ears a little, but barely felt it.

  Lisa always said fighting on the ground was more about wind than strength. If you held on long enough against an untrained enemy, you could get up at some point and knock him over with a wet napkin. Which is basically what Greg did. He scooted out from under Tony, kicked him down when he tried to stand, and then sat on his back like a cowboy.

  “You,” Greg said, punctuating the word with a hard slap to the back of Tony’s head, “are a stupid, loudmouthed, irritating, shitty—stupid-and-shitty—moronic, fat, lazy, and all around useless pile of nothing.” With every insult, he slapped Tony hard on the back of the head. Tony bucked and heaved but was too pooped to do anything but endure the abuse. “Also, you smell bad. You need to take more baths, basically. I used to think you were afraid of drowning, but I actually saw you swim today—floated around like a goopy turd in the water—so that’s no excuse. Smelly little crybaby.” He slapped him a final time, stood up, and started walking, not bothering to look back.

  A minute later, heavy footsteps and loud breathing sounded behind him. He was about to turn to defend himself when Tony shouted, “Hey, wait up! Wait a minute!”

  Greg’s left eye stung and would probably get puffy. He didn’t know what to do about food, and having left their guns on the bridge in preparation for climbing the mast, they couldn’t shoot anything. And yet … he did know where to find guns. Not the empty armory, but from the tents around the Pentagon. And not just any guns—military guns. Fully auto.

  He turned around and headed back.

  “Where we going to?” Tony said behind him.

  “To get guns.”

  “Then where?”

  “The airport,” Greg said. “Those kids the other night saw our boat. I think they’re the same ones who ambushed us. If not, they’ll know who did.”

  “You really think the others are alive?”

  Answering for Chelsea and Andrew, he said, “All we can do is hope.”

  35

  Greg still felt bad about robbing dead soldiers. But after what happened to Sarah, he exercised his moral flexibility and let Tony do the dirty work. Ten minutes later, Tony came out of a tent with two pistols and two rifles, which Greg thought might be M16s. When he looked on the side for a label, all he saw was a stamp reading, “PROPERTY OF U.S. GOVT,” and a serial number below that.

  “Way I see it,” Tony said, “we wait for them to come outside, then pop ’em. With these bad boys”—he patted his new rifle—“prolly take them out in like two seconds, tops.”

  Greg, who’d never popped anyone in his life, made a noncommittal sound and examined his bruised elbow.

  Since their fight, an understanding of sorts had risen between them. No longer did Tony feel the need to smart off and grouse about everything. He didn’t act cool, either. He seemed mad, and deeply ashamed—which threatened to make the proud kid that much angrier because Greg had witnessed it. Wisely, Greg acted clueless.

  “You think they got any food here?” Tony said.

  Greg scratched his chin. “Maybe. I think the Sickness probably got them before they ran out. I figure they probably had a lot of food somewhere. Well preserved, too. You know—for nuclear wars and stuff.”

  “You wanna look first before we go killing?”

  Greg smiled his first real smile since leaving the museum. “No sense killing on an empty stomach.”

  In truth, he hoped it wouldn’t come to that, for a number of reasons. One: he wasn’t sure he could go through with it. Two, if he did shoot someone, what if he got so guilty he couldn’t live with himself? He wasn’t like Jack—couldn’t blast someone one day and bury himself in a book the next. Lisa was similar … and also worse. She didn’t seem to care about strangers all that much. From what Greg could see, she hadn’t made a single real friend since the Sickness. About the closest she’d come was Tony, but that was because Tony didn’t expect anything from her.

  After twenty minutes spent searching, they found a nondescript tent loaded with pallets of food in a wide assortment. None of them had been broken into.

  “No way,” Tony said after pulling away the green shrinkwrap. “Lima beans. I used to hate them things. Now I could eat ’em all day.”

  Greg wrinkled his nose. “Maybe there’s something better.”

  Tony nodded and put it back.

  They found a pallet with canned corn, and another with big cans of tuna fish. A little more searching and then they had a can opener.

  “Try not to eat too much,” Greg said with his mouth full of corn. “Don’t wanna get sick.”

  “Okay, Mom,” Tony said, though not with his usual bite. He was having fun and enjoying the moment.

  Trying to be a good friend, fighting his sorrow with the only tool he had—forced cheerfulness—Greg smiled and opened another can.

  Greg figured the airport kids would be watching the water tonight, and that’s why he and Tony approached from the George Washington Parkway. They crept across the access bridge separating the airport from Crystal City. The other entrances had all been blocked off with the same barriers erected in the streets of D.C. This entrance was different, with several large vehicles blocking the way. Only … they weren’t normal vehicles. More like trucks or SUVs. Dark as it was, he could barely make out the machine guns on the roofs.

  “Those are like that one on the bridge!” Tony said. “See those guns?”

  “Let me guess—you already called them,” Greg said.

  Tony flashed him a smile.

  Unlike most roadblocks, made up of cars meshed together to form a gate, the airport entrance had an actual guard booth. Two kids stood inside, faintly illuminated by a soft, white light. One was talking as the other stared out the window. That one had a thing on his head—kind of like a helmet but covering the top half of his face.

  “What’s that on
his head?” Greg said.

  “Don’t know,” Tony said from the ground beside him. “What’s that light? You think they got a generator?”

  “Nah. Probably a camp light.”

  On the way in, they’d revamped their plan and decided wholesale murder and mayhem might not be the best approach. They first needed to know if their friends were alive.

  Tony said, “Guess we ain’t getting in this way. Maybe we can sneak over a fence or—”

  The door to the booth opened and the two guards jumped out. One ran for the closest vehicle while the other raised a rifle.

  Automatic gunfire shattered the night, and the ground in front of Greg and Tony exploded in red and yellow sparks, pelting them with stinging asphalt.

  “Run!” Greg screamed, already moving, legging it back the way they’d come with Tony right behind him.

  More bullets rained around them and a vehicle started up.

  “This way!” Greg shouted. He dashed down a ramp toward a service road about twenty feet below.

  An engine roared behind them. They both turned and fired their rifles wildly—very wildly, in fact. Neither had shot an automatic weapon before. They hit something, though, going by the twanging ricochets and screeching tires, and that gave them cover to run a little farther.

  Greg dropped his rifle over the side and shouted, “Come on!”

  Without looking back, he bounded over, hoping he’d judged correctly that they were now only ten feet up. He hit the ground hard and fell into a roll with nothing broken for his trouble. His rifle lay in the middle of the street about five feet away. Possibly broken, but maybe not, and well worth the time to dash over and pick it up. So that’s what he did. When he looked back to see if Tony had gotten his, he blinked in surprise.

  Tony wasn’t there.

  “What the …?” Greg said.

  “Dude, seriously?” Tony shouted from the ramp. “It’s too high! Why’d you jump for?”

  “Just jump! It’s like ten feet, you fat idiot! You jumped twice as far before!”

  “That was water!”

  Greg watched helplessly as his friend continued running down the ramp. Seconds later, Tony was tackled hard from behind and vanished from sight. For lack of a better option, Greg fired his rifle overhead, hoping maybe to scare whoever it was so Tony could escape. In response, two figures popped up with rifles and fired back, lighting up the night around him with sparks.

  Greg didn’t wait for more good luck. Zigging and zagging, he dashed across the service road, making for the towering, glass-faced office buildings.

  Greg spent the night hiding in a dumpster behind a hotel. Despite more than a year of no window washers and all kinds of weather, the building still looked glossy. Almost like the Sickness never happened. A couple of times, he heard vehicles pass nearby—airport kids, scouring the area in search of the world’s biggest idiot, who’d dared to challenge them on their turf.

  What had he been thinking, anyway? After what happened, of course they’d be extra alert. Greg came to the disheartening realization that he totally sucked at being a hero.

  Oh, how his crew had laughed at him. Giving orders and playing captain, that’s what they saw. But they’d never worn the cap. No, he didn’t actually have a cap. But he felt like he did. An invisible one that only got heavier as he worried about his friends. Being captain, it fell to him to save them, whatever the cost.

  He thought he knew what that kid had been wearing on his head. Some sort of night vision device, to go along with their cool guns and attack truck. Whoever they were, they were mega-equipped with the good stuff. Which made the chances of saving his friends that much gloomier.

  Greg slipped from his hiding spot in search of a more comfortable place to wait out the day. A block away, he discovered a comfortable couch in the lobby of a government contracting building. He could tell it was government because of the name: “StriKon.” He sort of liked it. A hint of implied aggression linked to the tactical root, “recon.” If his dad were alive, he’d declare the place yet another “big gray building” dotting the landscape in that part of Northern Virginia.

  Greg didn’t understand his dad’s beef with government buildings. He suspected it was tied to his parents’ disdain for public schools—or any organized schooling, really.

  “You should see me now, Pop,” he said with a smile, gazing at the broken glass littering the floor of the revolving door. “Breaking and entering, vandalism, trespassing … Your son’s a menace to society, and he likes it!”

  Beyond the lobby were several offices. Each had a beefy door with easy-to-shatter glass panes on either side. He smashed out one with the butt of his rifle, slipped through the narrow opening, and inhaled deeply. Unlike most places he’d scavenged, there were no stinkies here. Just a lot of dusty office equipment and locked doors. He did find a full candy dish. The candy was stale, but still tasty, and he gobbled it down without consideration for Jack’s rules against sugar. A minute later, an inside office yielded an untouched bag of potato chips.

  Everyone had learned long ago not to bother with refrigerators. Nothing good ever came of that but rotten food and a nightmare of crawling nasties. But the office smelled fresh, and so he took his chances. He opened the door and peered inside. Lots of black mold and rotten cartons he could no longer read—and six untouched bottles of Coke in the door. He grabbed one and sanitized it by wiping it on his pants.

  When he tasted it, he smiled and said, “Aaaaaaaah …” like in the TV commercials. Trying to cheer himself up.

  That night, Greg considered his dwindling options. He couldn’t storm the airport like a commando, and he couldn’t sneak in like a ninja. Those kids were like Jack—prepared, at least to some degree. Any attempt to approach at night would likely get him shot. Looking back, he found it surprising he was still alive. If they were like Jack, wouldn’t they be better marksmen? Maybe they were. They could have been firing warning shots, hoping for a quick surrender. They probably hadn’t expected Greg and Tony to shoot back with automatic weapons of their own. In their shoes, he’d wonder where these strangers had gotten such weapons, and whether they had friends with more.

  Greg thought about his missing crew and their merits. Chelsea liked a good joke, and hadn’t balked at being friends with Sarah, even though most of the Dragster girls had snubbed her as being a bit of a tomboy. Andrew wasn’t particularly useful, but he’d depended on Greg to keep him safe. And Tony? Well, Tony was Tony. But he’d been there with Greg and his sister from the very beginning, and loyalty like that meant something.

  With Sarah gone, they were only three kids. Maybe to Jack that wasn’t a big loss, but …

  “But they’re not Jack’s anymore,” Greg said quietly. “They’re mine. And I’m going to help them.”

  Frowning in the dark, he took a swig from his fourth Coke that day and brooded over how to actually do it.

  36

  Aimee didn’t survive the Sickness. By mid-fall, everyone alive had gotten sick and recovered already, leaving about a hundred and fifty children under ten years old, most ranging between two and seven. Of the teenagers in Dylan’s group, there were a little over thirty.

  Aaron had way more teenagers. Dylan had sent someone to count them one night, and the boy reported they had about fifty—many of them total strangers, recruited from outside the airport.

  One day in the fall, Aaron and his friends appeared on the tarmac riding six of the military vehicles Aimee had told him about. AVs—armored vehicles—with roof-mounted machine guns. The kids from Terminals B/C shot up a parked jumbo jet in full view of everyone. Terrifying and spectacular, as laser-like gouts of red tracer fire marked their targets.

  Dylan found himself wincing as he watched. The AVs were parked a little too close to their target for comfort. He sort of hoped they’d mess up and shoot a wing, which he knew carried the fuel and maybe still had some. But they focused mainly on the area ahead of the wings, and that’s why nobody got blown to smitheree
ns.

  “You took my guns, twerp,” Aaron said when Dylan let him and his friends in to talk.

  Just barely, he kept the surprise from his face. Did Aaron really know something, or was he simply guessing?

  “What do you want?” Dylan said.

  Aaron got in his face, and every kid from Terminal A who had a gun aimed them at him and his friends. The kids from B/C were pointing theirs, too.

  “I got some new guys and they need guns,” Aaron said. “Someone saw you sucking up to my ol’ man before he died. You all got guns now, which means you stole them. I’m here to get them back.”

  Dylan said, “Are you kidding me? You have guns.” He pointed at a grinning teenager named Tom who carried what looked like an M16.

  Aaron snorted. “We found these off dead army men. This is stupid. Listen—tell you what. Gimme the guns and come join us. We’ll start over, okay? Make it work. Just like old times.”

  Dylan shook his head. “I’m fine here.”

  “If we shoot out those,” Aaron said, pointing at the massive wall of windows overlooking the runways, “you won’t be. It’s getting colder every day. You’ll freeze.”

  Dylan said, “Nope. We’ll come to your side. Maybe we’ll fight about it and a bunch of us die. Or maybe only you. I’ll do my best to make sure it’s not me.” He shoved Aaron and several onlookers gasped. “I don’t care how many of those things you have. Stay away or we’re gonna fight. Come spring, I’m leaving, and you can burn the place down for all I care. But the guns and the food we took come with us. Little kids too. You’re welcome.”

  “I don’t give a shit about the kids,” Aaron said, eyes raging. “They’re rats. Wait till they eat everything and you’re starving. That happens, don’t come begging my way.”

  With a superior smirk, Aaron turned on his heel and left with his friends following dutifully behind. A minute later, they zoomed away.