Surviving Rage | Book 5

by Arellano, J. D.

  The man screamed the high-pitched sound echoing throughout the kitchen. The young woman screamed against the gag in her mouth as well. Feeling more pain than he could process, the man’s eyes rolled into the back of his head as he passed out.

  Ignoring the man as he slipped forward, then fell to the linoleum floor of the kitchen, still tied to the chair, Sommer turned his head toward the young woman. “What’s wrong? I probably did you a favor. There’s no way you liked having sex with this fat, little fuck.”

  The woman nodded insistently.

  “Seriously?”

  The woman continued to nod.

  Moving to her, he pulled the gag away.

  “I love him!”

  Sommer rolled his eyes again. “Now how the fuck would you know what love is?”

  The woman nodded yet again. When she spoke, more tears flowed forth as she stared at her husband lying on the floor. “I love him…” she said, softly.

  Sighing, Sommer shook his head. Reaching out, he grabbed the woman’s head by her ponytail. “Open your mouth,” he ordered.

  The woman’s eyes filled with terror as they darted first towards his crotch, then at his face.

  Sommer chuckled. “You wish, bitch. Now, open.”

  She did so slowly, her eyes never leaving his.

  “I guess if you’re willing to have sex with this little turd, you deserve a drink,” he said, bringing the bottle forward.

  “Sir, please,” she managed.

  He yanked on her ponytail hard, making her cry out. “Shut up,” he growled. “Now, open.”

  She did so once more.

  Positioning the bottle above her mouth, he paused. “Your husband there coughed all over me. That was pretty fucking rude. Since I don’t want to get coughed on, I’m going to pour a mouthful at a time. You will swallow every fucking drop, you got that?”

  With tear-filled eyes, the young woman managed a nod.

  “Hey,” Sommer said, grinning. “Don’t be so sad. Your husband took away your party years. This will be a little taste of what you missed.” With that, he poured a few ounces of tequila into her mouth.

  She swallowed, then grimaced sharply.

  “Open,” he ordered.

  She did so.

  He poured more tequila.

  After the eight round, she was incoherent. Her head lulled heavily on her neck, and it took much of his strength to keep it upright. He thought about forcing another few ounces into her, but decided he was bored. Letting go of her ponytail, he let her head fall forward, then to the right. Dizzy from the alcohol, she unconsciously over-corrected, jerking her head back to the left. The motion knocked her sideways, and she fell to the floor with a heavy thump. Urine began to stain the faded fabric of her blue jeans.

  “Aw, come on,” he said, shaking his head. Irritated, he turned and walked out of the kitchen. The home was small, with two tiny bedrooms, a bathroom that was more like a closet, and a living room barely larger than the kitchen, but it did have a single car garage. Returning to the kitchen, he grabbed the man by his legs and dragged him out of the kitchen, not bothering to untie him. Sommer didn’t slow as he stepped down the single step into the garage, letting the man’s head bounce against the concrete as he was pulled into the small space. The man groaned lightly, but didn’t otherwise stir.

  After positioning him in the middle of the garage, Sommer returned to the home and dragged the young woman out to the garage in the same manner. The woman’s ponytail softened the blow as her head hit the hard surface of the garage, but with the amount of alcohol she had in her system, she likely wouldn’t have felt it either way.

  Sommer stood her chair up and put the back of her chair against her husband’s then used a piece of rope to tie them together.

  Once that was done, he returned to the house, turning off the light in the garage, plunging them into darkness.

  Grabbing what was left of the tequila, he went to the couch and sat down heavily.

  “Man,” he said aloud, “I work hard.”

  His phone buzzed, prompting him to pull it from his pocket and look at it.

  92 00 33 93 40 62 31 94 51 94 41 50 00 41 53 81 10 43 60 61 32 30 93 51 53 63 74 42 20 22 74 91 93 52 81 22 63 52 40 33 82 41 94 61 52 61 43 72 53 42 20 52 23 41 83 21 61 32 22 31 21 92 74 53 81 20 42 10 73 42 80 62 63 82 61 81 73 82 32 50 72 90 83 91 43 71 91 43 94 22 41 32 62 63 21 81 73 51 62 31 40 30 73 94 00 21 60 72 10 00 53 82 10 20 23 22 10 52 23 30

  33 71 41 94 61 10 10 21 81 40 10 80 32 33 93 51 23 91 74 61 62 73 43 62

  84

  Nodding, he looked at the bottle of tequila, then set it aside.

  ‘After,’ he said to himself, before reaching for his backpack.

  By the time he was done, he felt as if he were going cross eyed. Looking down at what he’d decrypted, he sat back against the worn cushions of the couch and thought about what he was facing.

  Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was Sunday. The target would be arriving at the OKC Protective Zone via the I-40 Freeway on Wednesday, so he needed to get there in advance, scope out the area along the 40 that would allow him to take the girl before they got there.

  He also now knew that there were eleven men protecting her. He assumed the tall black doctor and the Navy SEAL he’d encountered on the plane he’d shot down would be part of the team, but who were the others? Were they Navy SEALs as well?

  The safest thing for him to do was to assume they were, which meant that whatever he did would have to not only catch them by surprise, but it would be swift, effective, and overwhelming.

  Which meant he’d need a) a good sized force, and b) powerful weapons. M16s, MP4s and/or long range rifles wouldn’t be enough. One slip up and the SEAL would likely get the girl out of danger before he could react.

  Grabbing the bottle of tequila once more, he took a swig, then jotted some notes down on the back of the piece of paper he’d used to decode the message. Once he settled on the info he needed, he encoded it using the agreed upon cipher. Grabbing his phone, he sent back the message:

  10 40 72 92 61 62 90 83 31 33 51 72 32 80 81 21 61 42 93 23 94 52 72 73 42 81 60 74 10 63

  00 31 71 53 40 42 74 32 10 00 33 90 23 83 91 62 30 33 60 42 10 83 63 22 70 70 50 73 61 50

  33 43 62 80 32 94 22 82 41 00 53 92 61 94 74

  53

  With that done, he decided it was time to eat something and get some rest. Returning to the kitchen, he found a cooler that was still partially cool, thanks to the small amount of ice that remained inside. He rummaged through it, finding a package of strip beef, what looked like homemade salsa, and a ziploc bag full of flour tortillas. He heated a pan on the stove and threw the beef into it, cooking it until it was seared on the edges but still pink in the middle. After dumping the beef onto a plate, he heated a pair of tortillas in the same pan. Once they were warm, he stuffed some beef in each and wrapped them into a makeshift burrito.

  When the first bite of beef and tortilla hit his tongue, he realized how hungry he was and how much he’d missed a hot meal. He devoured them in short order, using a spoon to pour salsa into the burrito before each bite.

  “These beaners do make some tasty food,’ he thought. It was a shame they couldn’t make the food and go back to where they came from. As tasty as it was, it wasn’t worth having them in the country for.

  With a full stomach, he made his way out of the kitchen and back into the living room. After checking to make sure the husband and wife were still secure (they were; the man was awake but still tightly bound, the woman still passed out drunk and covered in piss) he went to the couch, where he decided he’d sleep. The thought of sleeping on the couple’s bed disgusted him.

  He kicked off his boots and lay back on the couch, grateful for the chance to rest. It’d been a long day of riding, and though he’d enjoyed torturing the couple, it still required effort.

  He was asleep in minutes.

  ‘What is that smell?’ the man wondered as he turned his head, trying to catch a glimpse of
anything in the darkness of the garage. He’d heard the white man leave on his motorcycle about twenty minutes ago, and he was honestly surprised that the man had let them live. He’d been all but certain that the man would kill both him and his wife Esmeralda, but for some reason, he’d simply left.

  But what was that smell?

  “Ai, papi,” Esmeralda said from the chair behind him. “My head…”

  “Is okay, mi amor,” he replied, smiling slightly.

  “Are you okay, Herbert?” she asked, turning her head slightly.

  “Si, mi amor,” he said, allowing the relief to flow over him as he thought about how close they’d come to dying.

  “Amor, can you reach the rope at my wrist?” his wife asked.

  Flexing his fingers, he realized he could, and quite easily. After fumbling with the rope a bit, he found the end of it, then traced it back to the knot. It was surprisingly loose. Had it been that loose the entire time?

  What difference would that make? Trying to escape while that man was there would have led to their deaths for sure.

  “Hold on, my love,” Herbert said, as he pushed the end of the rope up and through the knot. He repeated the process once more, feeling the bonds loosen further, but as he did, he felt himself scrunching up his nose at the offensive smell that had begun to permeate the space.

  The ropes fell away.

  “Papi, I’m free!” Esmeralda cried out. “Ai, it’s so dark in here!”

  “Si,” he said, wishing he could reach his shirt to pull it over his nose.

  “I can’t see anything,” she complained, as she felt the ropes around her ankles. Bending down further, she was in the process of trying to feel out the knots when she heard something plastic clatter to the floor by her feet. She bent down and felt around until her fingers collided with it, knocking it a few inches away. Moving her hands ever so gently in that direction, she lowered her hand down onto the object. It was about four inches long and plastic, but with metal on one end, including a grooved metal surface.

  A lighter.

  “It’s a lighter, mi amor. I’ll be able to see the knots!” she called out.

  In the second that Herbert heard the word lighter, his mind exploded with the sudden realization of what he’d smelled.

  Gas.

  “Mi amor, don’t - ”

  The small home exploded outward, sending a fireball into the sky.

  Five miles away, Steve Sommer grinned as he sat on his parked motorcycle, watching parts of the home fall from the sky.

  ‘I should get extra for style points on that one,’ he thought proudly, before revving the engine of his motorcycle and leaning forward, pulling away from the shoulder and back onto the road.

  As good as it felt to rid the country of a few more Mexicans, it was Monday now, and he had just over 800 miles to go. There was no time to waste.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Oklahoma Protective Zone, Oklahoma

  Day 2

  “Hey! Look who’s here!” the brown-haired teenage boy said, flipping the football in his hand a few feet into the air as he spoke to the boy standing next to him. He caught the ball with one hand as the other boy called out to the newcomer.

  “What’s up, Cody?”

  Trotting over to where the other boys stood, Cody smiled. “Not much, Johnny. Just got back from listening to Jeremiah speak.”

  “Yeah?” Johnny asked, reaching up to brush his bangs away from his face, revealing a forehead with a sprinkling of acne. “What’s that all about?”

  Cody shrugged. “Not much, I mean, it’s cool and all. He really seems to care about us and he tries to make things better for us.”

  “Like how?” the first boy asked, still flipping the football in the air and catching it as he looked over.

  “I mean, like, he got the community centers open for us so we could get sports equipment and stuff,” Cody replied, looking at the bigger boy. At thirteen, Cody Simpson was used to being thinner than his peers, but he had definitely been growing taller over the last year. ‘You’re all arms and legs,’ his dad had joked, noting the boy’s rapidly increasing height.

  Gunner Tillman, on the other hand, looked like he’d been carved from granite. At five-eight and one hundred and sixty-five pounds, he’d spent countless hours lifting weights and strengthening his core. As a sophomore in high school, he’d already garnered the attention of several college scouts for his ability on the football field as both a quarterback and safety.

  With their differences in stature, looks, and confidence, Cody had disillusions about the boy’s niceness towards him. In normal circumstances, Cody would be lucky if Gunner simply ignored him. In all likelihood, if they were both attending the same high school, Gunner would be part of the ‘cool’ crowd, while Cody would be part of the group that simply wished they could fit in: kind of athletic, pretty smart, not bad looking, decent sense of humor, but just average.

  But nothing was normal anymore. Cody, his sister Beth, and his parents had barely escaped Wichita in one piece, leaving with little more than the clothes on their backs. Desperate to make it to the Protective Zone, they’d traveled the first part of the 160-plus mile journey to Oklahoma City alone, driving as far as they could before they’d been forced to abandon their vehicle and walk. Eventually, they’d been able to hitch a ride from a group of fellow survivors, which included Johnny and his father, and after three days of travelling in a constant state of fear, fatigue, and hunger, they’d made it to Oklahoma City alive and in relatively good shape.

  Gunner’s experience had been much more difficult. He, alone, out of his family of eight, had survived his oldest brother’s sudden attacks. Out of a need to tell someone what he’d been through, the muscular, confident teenager had been unable to hold back tears as he told the two of them about how his brother Mitchell had tore through his family with a savagery none of them could possibly withstand. The parents had been first to fall under the muscular twenty-five year old’s assault, dying on the tile floor of the kitchen, and Gunner’s two older brothers died trying to save them. After Mitchell killed Christina, the second oldest child in the family, who’d been upstairs in her bedroom, listening to music with her noise-cancelling headphones, he’d come after Gunner and Chastity, his nine year-old sister. Gunner pulled her with him as he fled the home, but at some point Mitchell’s fingers had found the girl’s leg, carving grooves into her skin as he sought to grab hold of her.

  She’d turned not long after.

  Unable to bring himself to hurt her, Gunner had simply ran. Using his athletic conditioning to leave her behind, he’d run away, feeling the wind push the tears that streamed from his eyes down across his face.

  He’d slept under a bush that night, then found his way to a neighbor’s house the next morning. It was there that he’d turned on the radio and heard the message about the protective zone. Though he didn’t have a driver’s license yet, he’d spent plenty of time behind the wheel of his big brother’s Camaro (under Mitchell’s supervision, of course), so he took the neighbor’s work truck and drove it to Oklahoma City.

  Now, the three of them clung to each other’s friendship, finding the smallest sense of normalcy in being among other boys, playing sports and talking about the cute girls they’d seen in the surrounding residence halls.

  “Alright,” Gunner said, holding the football in his right hand. “How about Johnny goes out, Cody, you cover him.”

  “Okay,” Johnny replied, nodding.

  “Uh, okay…” Cody answered, feeling uncertain. His growth spurt had brought with it a bit of clumsiness as his mind still tried to adjust to the longer legs he now possessed.

  Gunner and Cody huddled together, then split up. Moving over to stand in front of Johnny, Cody prepared himself to play defensive back.

  “Ready, set, hike!”

  Johnny sprung forward, taking off at full speed. Turning and running with him Cody tried to keep his body between Johnny and Gunner. Though Johnny was fast, Co
dy discovered that his long legs were helping him keep up with the older boy.

  Until Johnny faked left, then cut right.

  Cody’s legs tangled themselves together and down he went, falling to the ground and tumbling a few times. Looking up, he saw Johnny running with the ball, racing away at half-speed. A few steps later, he spiked the ball into the ground.

  “Touchdown!”

  Getting up from the ground, Cody shook his head as he walked back to where Gunner stood. Embarrassed, he kept his head down as he approached.

  “It’s alright, bro,” Gunner said. “Alright, change positions. This time Cody goes out, you cover him.”

  “Cool,” Johnny replied, leaning over and putting his hands on his knees as he sucked in air.

  Walking a few steps away with Cody, Gunner lowered his voice. “Alright, look. You’re faster than him, okay? I want you to run out at about three-quarter speed for about ten yards, shuffle your feet like you’re going to cut, then go long, got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Ready, set, hike!”

  Cody took off, holding back some of his speed as he ran the first ten yards. Glancing at Johnny, he saw the other boy grinning with confidence as he kept up with him. Reaching the ten yard point, he shuffled his feet and jerked his head and shoulders to the left. Johnny lunged in that direction as Cody took off, using all of his speed now.

  In less than a second, he was five yards ahead of the older boy. Looking back, he saw Gunner smile. Motioning with his hand, Gunner told him to keep going.

  Seeing that he’d been beaten, Johnny gave up, coming to a stop as Gunner launched the ball with a flick of his wrist. It sailed through the air in a perfect spiral, covering fifty yards in a perfect arc.

  ‘You’re gonna do it!’ Cody thought as he saw the ball descending. Extending his arms, he opened his hands, wondering how Gunner was able to put the ball exactly where it needed to be. It was so perfect.