by Hunt, James
Rodney waited for a moment, unsure if she would speak, and unsure of what he should say. But thankfully the mother kept her head down, and allowed Rodney a moment of reflection. With so much talk of family and death, Rodney couldn’t help but think of his own family. Especially his dad.
He couldn’t keep track of the number of times he wanted to call his dad up just to hear his voice and that boisterous laugh. To this day, he still hadn’t ever heard a laugh so full of life. And he’d kill for one of his mother’s pies. Any pie. So long as she was the one who made it.
Just one more dinner, one more trip up here to the cabin during the spring or summer to go fishing. One more hello, good night, or I love you. But his one mores weren’t in the cards. Cancer and heart failure made sure of that.
Rodney looked at the huddled masses asleep on the floor and wondered how many of them had lost loved ones. How many of them wanted “one more”? He knew that mother wanted one more goodbye, a chance to do it the right way.
Their family and friends were left for dead back at the town, their hasty retreat leaving no time for proper goodbyes or funerals. Burials were hard, but despite the pain, they brought acceptance, a sense of peace.
The couch groaned in relief when Rodney stood, and his footsteps were hurried toward Luke’s room. He found Mark and Kate inside, both kneeling by Luke’s bed, and he gently knocked on the doorframe. They turned, smiling with sad eyes.
“Hey,” Rodney said. “How’s he doing?”
“The doctor said time will tell.” Kate had her arms crossed over her chest, her hands rubbing her shoulders.
“Listen, I’m not going with you to the highway patrol station,” Rodney said.
“What?” Kate and Mark both stood, walking to him at the door. “Rodney, you said—”
“You guys should still go, but I need to go back to the town,” Rodney said. “I’ll take the people who lost their loved ones. I want us to bury them.” He glanced back at the group. “I want them to have a chance to say goodbye.”
“Rodney,” Kate said, shaking her head. “I don’t think that’s a good—”
“I lost both my parents within the same year,” Rodney said. “Cancer took my dad, and then a broken heart took my mom. I was able to say goodbye to both before they were gone.” He gestured to the people inside. “They didn’t. But I can right that wrong.”
“I’ll go with you,” Mark said then looked at Kate. “You can lead the group to the station. They’ll follow you.”
“He’s right,” Rodney replied. “They will.”
Rodney watched Kate process his request, and when she finally worked through it, she simply nodded.
7
It didn’t take much coaxing for Rodney to convince the townspeople to head back and bury their dead. He waited until Kate and Stacy and the eight others made their trek toward the highway patrol station before he led the charge back to town with Mark, Harold, a young woman named Dalia, and Yvonne in tow. They were the only ones with family that had died. Everyone else had either perished with their loved ones or were vacationers with no family.
But Rodney figured the others that died had family somewhere, and even though they’d never see each other again, he still felt an obligation to bury them properly. That was what he hoped someone would do for him.
The return to the valley town was quick, despite the heavier snowfall. One hand gripped a shovel, and the other held the rifle strapped to his shoulder should he need to put anyone else beneath the ground.
They found the town deserted when they arrived, but Rodney still performed a thorough sweep before he let anyone enter. Once they did, the doctor, Harold, and the mother, Yvonne, and the young woman, Dalia, found their family members piled in the snow behind one of the cabins.
The cold had already turned their skin blue, and frostbite was showing on their fingertips. One by one, they pulled the bodies from the pile and laid them in a row. Final goodbyes were whispered, and then Rodney planted his shovel into the icy earth.
Winter made the digging difficult, but they didn’t need to be deep graves. The bodies would freeze and then decay in the spring, but by then, with any luck, the world would be back standing on at least one leg.
Rodney smirked. Kate’s optimism was starting to wear off on him. No, it wasn’t her optimism—it was something else. He’d been touched with a purpose that went beyond him. For as long as he could remember prepping, Rodney was always concerned with making sure that he was ready, but not once had he ever considered making sure everyone else was ready. Because if everyone was ready, they wouldn’t have been in this position in the first place.
Each grave was marked with a small cross that the doctor constructed from dead tree branches. He planted them firmly at the head of each mound when it was finished, and then they moved on to the next.
It took almost two hours, and by the time they finished, the snowfall had worsened, bringing with it colder temperatures.
Mark appeared through the white haze, lifting his arm to shield his eyes from the snowfall. “We should get heading back.”
Rodney nodded and then looked at the last grave they’d finished. It belonged to Yvonne’s husband, and she knelt at the foot of the grave while the doctor finished up the cross at the grave’s head. She had her hands clasped together tightly, her body curled forward in the position of prayer. How someone could still have faith after something like this, Rodney had no idea.
“Rodney,” Mark said, prodding his arm.
“Right.” Rodney stepped toward the woman, having to lift his feet higher in the snow now that it was starting to pile up again. He placed a gloved hand on her shoulder so lightly that she didn’t even realize he was there until he spoke. “We need to leave.”
Yvonne jumped, slightly startled, and then nodded, pursing her lips as she wiped her eyes. The doctor walked around to join them, and then he stopped in his tracks. He held up his hand and began to retreat toward the main road between the building alleyways.
“I’ll be right back! My daughter wanted something from our cabin. It’ll just take a minute.” The old doctor broke into a halfhearted jog that stole his breath.
It wasn’t until Harold was out of view, and Rodney turned away, that he heard the gunshot. He spun around, dropping his shovel in favor of his rifle, and sprinted down the alley toward the gunfire just in time to find the doctor on his knees, his arms limp at his side, and then face planted onto the icy pavement.
Rodney tried to bring the rifle up to his shoulder to aim, but a hand stopped him. He turned to find Mark holding him still, and another gunshot thundered through the hazy white of the snowfall. And then, toward the town’s entrance, a light glow of orange burned through the snow like a rising sun.
“Burn it! Shoot it! Kill anything that’s still alive in this place!”
The order boomed from the haze of falling snow, and Mark pulled Rodney backward. “C’mon!” he whispered harshly, heading toward the safety of the ridge.
Rodney stole one last glance on his ascent, just before the snow and trees blocked the town from view. He saw a man with a torch, standing over the slain doctor’s body. He aimed a pistol at the doctor’s head and then fired again, the doctor’s lifeless body twitching on the pavement.
Rage flooded Rodney’s veins, and he stopped his climb while Mark, Dalia, and Yvonne continued their ascent. Rodney reached for the rifle, letting go of the steep ledge, and slid down with an avalanche of snow.
“Rodney, no!” Mark yelled, but his voice was snuffed out by the growing wind. Rodney’s boots planted against the snow and ice, and he cranked the lever of his rifle to load a bullet. He wanted to see these people. He wanted to meet the man in charge of those that would kill and rape so willingly. He wanted to see the face of the men he planned to kill.
Rodney leaned against the back side of one of the cabins near the town’s east end. Flames grew hotter and wilder on the west end, the convicts marching their way down, torching the buildings one by
one.
Heat from the flames burned a hole through the cold, and ash drifted down with the snow, staining the pure white with grey. He hurried down the nearest alley and stopped at the edge. He craned his head around the corner, and what he saw burning in the light of the flames made him gasp.
It wasn’t a group of thugs, or a gang laced together with matching tattoos marching into town. The numbers that they’d estimated weren’t even close. What Rodney got a look at was a group of eighty-plus armed men. It was an army.
He quickly scanned the line of men, all of them marching without any type of structural ranking. He crouched to one knee and aimed. He could pick off four of them before they even knew what hit them.
The first man came into Rodney’s crosshairs. He steadied then squeezed the trigger. The man dropped, and Rodney moved to his right, finding a confused and frightened man aimlessly gripping a shotgun. Rodney fired again.
The second convict joined his comrade on the ground. The ranks panicked now, most of them firing blindly to the east. A few bullets nicked the front of the porch that Rodney was tucked behind, but none of them got close enough for him to even feel the breeze.
Rodney lined up another shot and fired again, this time pushing the front lines back as a third convict dropped to the ground. A brass casing ejected from the rifle’s side as another quickly took its place. He gritted his teeth and lined up another shot, but the crosshairs at the end of the scope wavered. He was shaking now. Trembling from anger, and from fear, and from the cold at his back.
One of the inmates screamed, charging forward, firing at anything that looked funny, and a few stray bullets pushed Rodney from the alley. He cut behind the back of the building and leaned against the wall, the rifle barrel tilted toward the sky. He shut his eyes, which stung with sweat. He knew he couldn’t take them all on by himself. It was a suicide mission.
In one swift movement, Rodney darted from the cabin, sprinting as fast as his legs would carry him toward the ridge. His muscles burned as he ascended the slope, and once he was at the top, he turned to find the valley below in flames.
The fire burned bright and hot, and Rodney saw the clusters of inmates forced back toward the west end near the highway. Rodney wasn’t sure how long he watched the buildings smolder into nothing but ash, but by the time he turned around, his eyes burned along with the town.
Rodney broke into a sprint and eventually found Mark and Dalia up ahead. Mark kept asking him questions. What did he see? What did he do? But Rodney kept silent. They needed to put distance between them and the army. And they needed to get to Kate before she left the highway patrol station. If it was even still there.
Dennis leaned back on the hood of an old F-150 and closed his eyes, but the light of the fire was even visible through his eyelids. He smiled, listening to a few of the men hoot and holler as they watched the place burn.
But then Dennis heard the gunshots. When he watched four of his men go down, he leapt off the truck with the agility of a cat, landing gracefully on his feet. He watched from the road as his men were pushed back. He squinted up ahead to find the shooter, but the flames were too bright, and the fire cast too many shadows.
“You don’t back down!” Dennis spit the order from behind safety, and when they didn’t heed his words, they heeded his bullets. Dennis fired four shots next to the feet of the men in the rear, and pushed them forward. “Find them, you cowards!”
One of his men broke free at the front, charging wildly, but by then the flames had caught the rest of the houses, and it forced everyone back. The fire raged so hot that Dennis had forgotten about the cold. He found Mulls and ordered Martin and Billy to him immediately.
When the pair arrived, he grabbed Billy by his collar. “I want you to search the area. You find any tracks, and you stick to them until you find whoever made them. And do not come back to me without a body or another place to burn, you got it?”
They nodded, and Dennis flung the younger sibling back, sending them off into the storm. Dennis lifted his face toward the sky, squinting due to the snowfall. He wondered if it would be another bad one like they had before, but he didn’t think so. Those types of storms they’d experienced tended to be one in a season.
The prospect of the townspeople escaping was more troublesome. He thought of the people who’d killed his men at the hospital. The fact that there were people out there that slipped away made that bug in his head skitter. But they wouldn’t be able to evade his best trackers again. Those brothers were more bloodhound than human.
“Boss,” Mulls said, coming up behind him. “Let’s get out of here. There’s nothing to salvage, and we don’t know when this storm is going to end.”
“No,” Dennis said.
“Dennis, we have to—”
“We hit the trooper station, now!” He hammered his fist in the air and leaned toward Mulls in the process. “Get the guys, and tell them to get back on the highway.”
Mulls gestured toward the sky, the wind picking up and blasting a sheet of snow against his body. “The storm is only going to get worse! We won’t even be able to see what we’re shooting at, and we haven’t sent scouts to the station to see what we’re up against!”
The bug gnawed at the bits of wiring in his brain, tearing violence and rage loose. The rest of the signals suddenly fried, and he whirled around, fist aimed for Mulls’s face, and the harsh contact caused the bone to emit a loud crack in the cold that bit and stung both men.
Mulls cupped the cheek that Dennis had hit. “Son of a bitch!” The big bear charged Dennis, tackling him hard to the pavement. His sheer weight and size gave him the upper hand as they sprawled over the snow, fists clenched and arms ramming them into whatever flesh they could find.
Dennis lifted his knee and connected with Mulls’s groin. Mulls yelped in pain, seizing up long enough for Dennis to fling him off.
Mulls rolled to his back on the pavement, scrunching his face in pain, as Dennis jumped on him to seize the opportunity.
Every punch into Mulls’s face bloodied Dennis’s knuckles. The cartilage in his nose crunched and dissolved with each blow. The tension in Mulls’s body released, and his arms and limbs lay limp at his sides. Dennis’s arm grew heavy, and he strained, but he kept beating the man’s face. The bug burrowed deeper and deeper into his mind.
“My way!” Dennis screamed into Mulls’s lifeless face. “My way! My way! My way! My way!” Each phrase was met with another blow until Mulls’s face was no longer recognizable.
Gasping for air, and exhausted, Dennis rolled off Mulls and sprawled out on the snowy pavement next to him. Blood covered his right arm, his face, and his chest. He coughed and then glanced over at Mulls’s lifeless body.
The bug stopped digging, and Dennis rolled to his side, pushing himself up off the ground. He wobbled back on his feet, and when he looked down at Mulls, he knew the big bear was dead. He turned around, finding Jimmy standing behind him, rifle in hand.
Jimmy’s gaze fell from Dennis to Mulls then back to Dennis. The thickened snowfall made it difficult to make out the features on Jimmy’s face, but it was easy to see the shotgun aimed at him.
“What did you do?” Jimmy said, his arms trembling, his voice stuck in that high octave. Three quick steps put him an arm’s length away from Dennis, and the anger on his face was clear as day now. “What did you do?”
Dennis glanced down at Mulls’s body and then back to the end of Jimmy’s shotgun. “You going to shoot me, Jimmy?” He made it one step before the familiar tha-chunk of a pump-action twelve gauge stopped him cold.
Jimmy lowered his eyes to Mulls once again, and the anger faded to sadness, but it was gone by the time they returned to Dennis. “Christ. You killed him!”
“And what did Mulls ever do for you?” Dennis asked, his eyes searching for any more of his men that could be lurking, growing bolder when he realized they were still alone. “It was my idea to take the towns. It was my idea to gather supplies.” He shuffled very ca
reful steps toward Jimmy with each sentence, unnoticeable in their small increments. “You know what Mulls wanted? He wanted us to lie low, forget about it.” Dennis pointed toward the smoldering town. “This is what happens when you lie low!”
“Maybe.” Jimmy shook his head, raising the shotgun to his shoulder and taking aim. “But you didn’t do shit for me on the inside. It was all Mulls. And he did the same for you! Go to hell—”
With his arm now within the reach of the shotgun’s barrel, Dennis lunged his hand out, ducking his head out of the way as Jimmy squeezed the trigger. The blast deafened Dennis to the world, and he felt a light pinch in his shoulder, but with Jimmy surprised by the blow, he easily snatched the gun away.
A quick adjust of his grip, and Dennis squeezed the trigger, shooting from the waist. The slug tore through Jimmy’s stomach, and blood and intestines slid down the ridges of his ribs as he tumbled backward and lay still, falling snow slowly covering the exposed wound.
With the shotgun in his hand, standing between two dead men, he heard the shouts of the others heading his way. He quickly aimed the gun at Mulls’s stomach and fired, blasting a slug through the dead man’s big stomach, and a few seconds later, Dennis was surrounded.
The convicts appeared like ghosts through the sheets of snow, and every one of their faces fell to Mulls first, then to Jimmy, and finally to Dennis. As the circle of spectators grew, so did the number of angry expressions. Before any of them could shoot, Dennis lowered the shotgun and pointed at Jimmy.
“The skinny bastard tried to kill Mulls!” Dennis heaved exhausted breaths, shaking his head. “I tried to stop him.”
“Bullshit!” A voice echoed from the circle, and a few murmurs of agreement followed. “Jimmy wouldn’t do that!”
“No?” Dennis asked, laughing. “You don’t think those two didn’t have history? You don’t think Jimmy got tired of following orders?” He searched for the source of the voice in the crowd but had no luck in finding it. “I told Mulls we should go to the highway patrol station now, and when he told Jimmy that, the bastard shot him then started whaling on him.” He pointed toward the bullet wound that he fired just moments before everyone had arrived, to help corroborate his story. “And you know why Mulls wanted us to attack the pigpen? Because of that!” he shouted, thrusting his hand toward the town they’d just turned to ash. “I told everyone here that people would eventually push back! And what happens if the people that were here find that highway patrol station before we take it out? Huh?” He walked to one of the men on the circle’s edge. “You want to give up your warm bed?” He turned to the man next to him. “You want to go back to wanking it with your hand instead of having a woman?” Slowly, the heads started to shake in response, and a few nos filtered through the air, and Dennis retreated into the circle, and the majority of the inmates’ mood shifted. “If we don’t act now, then we can lose everything! And I’m telling you right now, boys, that I’m not going back in a cell. I’ll be six feet under before that happens.”
