James got past the last one. He was in between the barren trees. Up ahead, the pines started.
There was no sight of Sadie.
James was out of breath. His rifle was gone. He reached for his handgun.
It was gone too.
Someone had taken it.
25
ART
Art was alone in the room. Sarge had left, without telling him what he’d kept him alive for. The candles had long since gone out.
No light came in from anywhere. It was pitch black. Art couldn’t see a thing.
The corpse of his friend still lay there on the floor with a bullet hole in it. Art could smell it. What little material had been in the bowels had evacuated, creating a wretched stench.
It was the smell of death. It seeped into Art’s bones and his mind.
He was still tied up. His legs and arms were impossibly stiff. He desperately wanted to move them.
His mind was turmoil. There was no point in even thinking anymore. He was far beyond the point of wanting to die or wanting to live.
He’d been psychologically reduced to nothing.
Nothing but the desire to move his arms and legs.
He passed the time by staring into the darkness, curling and uncurling his fingers, wiggling his feet back and forth. Whatever he could move, he did. It was the only thing to do.
No memories or thoughts came to him.
He was nothing.
His mind was nothing.
A creaking sound lit up his mind.
What was it?
He must have been imagining it.
“Must be something nothing,” said Art, mumbling like an incoherent drunk to himself.
The sound continued.
Another sound. A footstep.
“Must be close to dying… dying… dying,” he muttered. “Hallucinating. Starting to hallucinate.”
More creaking. More footsteps.
“Going nuts. Going nuts. Going nuts.”
To distract himself from the hallucinations, Art started humming. Not even a tune. Just a flat nothing of a melody, devoid of anything resembling musical notes.
“Shut the hell up, you moron,” said someone.
Art didn’t recognize the voice. It sounded like it was coming from mere feet away from himself. He saw nothing in the darkness.
He closed his eyes to distract himself from trying to look. He couldn’t tell the difference whether they were open or closed.
“Now the voices are coming,” said Art.
He started humming again.
“Can’t get me. Can’t get me,” said Art, punctuating his insane humming with more words. Just for something to say. Just because.
“Get off that damn humming,” said the voice, its tone harsh and frantic.
The voice was starting to sound real. Very real.
“Are you real?”
“Of course I’m real. Just shut up and listen to me. I don’t have much time.”
“Who are you?” said Art. He was beginning to entertain the possibility that there was a real person in the room speaking to him.
“It’s Janet, idiot. Remember me? I’m in your regiment.”
“Janet… Janet… Don’t know,” said Art.
“I gave you a candy bar once when you were about to pass out from hunger. Remember the raid on that gas station? And you saved my ass by shooting some son of a bitch who’d pulled a knife on me.”
“Oh…” said Art. “Yeah, I know a Janet. Still don’t know if you’re real, though.”
“Knock it off, Art. We’re all going to die. There’s no need to make such a fuss about it just because it’s your time.”
Art hadn’t even been aware that the voice was female. Now he heard it. It was softer, higher-pitched than Sarge’s voice, the last voice he’d been heard before being trapped in this room with a corpse.
“Damn, it smells horrible in here.”
Art mumbled something unintelligible.
Art felt Janet’s hands on him. They were rough, rather than soft. Moisturizers were a thing of the past. Office work, without getting your hands dirty, was also a thing of the past. Janet had been out there with Art and the rest of them, doing whatever Sarge told them to do. They hadn’t had a choice.
“So you’re really real?” said Art. “Unless I’m hallucinating feelings now. Physical feelings, I mean.”
“Of course I’m real, idiot.”
Art heard a knife flicking out and locking into place.
“You’re going to slit my throat or something?”
He said it with the mildest of interest. It didn’t matter much to him.
“Just shut up and let me cut these…”
Art felt the tension as the bindings dug into his wrists. Then the pressure released and suddenly his hands were free. But his arms hung limply at his sides.
He felt like he was Sisyphus, forced to do the same pointless thing over and over again. Only he had it worse than Sisyphus.
When all of Art’s bindings had been cut, he slumped forward onto the floor. Just like before.
Something hard was being pressed against his lips. Then the water started flowing. Janet was holding a bottle of water to his lips as he lay face-up on the floor, trying to get his body to work.
“You’re in rough shape, and it’s not going to get any easier.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want to kill Sarge.”
“So go do it. What do you need me for?”
“I need your help.”
“Get someone else. I’m not exactly the most physically fit right now.”
“You’re the only one desperate enough to help me.”
“Seems like everyone’s always trying to get me to kill someone. When do I get to decide anything for myself?”
“When this hellish existence is over. And we both know that’s not going to happen. Your life hasn’t been yours since the EMP. And neither has mine.”
“Why do you want to kill Sarge so much?”
“He killed my brother. And my father… and my husband.”
“The whole family, eh?” Art was too far past the point of normal experiences to feel any sympathy for her words. To him, they were just that, just words.
Janet gave him a vicious slap across the face. It stung terribly.
“You going to help me or not? Because I don’t have any problem ending you right here.”
“Whatever,” muttered Art. “I’ll help you. The other guys wanted me to kill Kor or something insane. I guess I’ll settle for Sarge. They’d be happy about that, I guess. Maybe not as happy if…”
“What in the world are you talking about?” snapped Janet. “Now we don’t have much time. We’ve got to sneak you out of here before morning before they come for you.”
“Why are they coming for me?”
“It doesn’t matter. Forget about that. Because I’m getting you out of here.”
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere where you can get your strength back.”
“Just tell me the plan,” said Art. “I can’t handle all this. Give it to me straight. If you want to kill Sarge, why not just wait for him here with me? I’ll be the bait. Whatever, I don’t care. You do your thing and I do mine. If I get shot, whatever…”
“Sarge is never coming back here, you moron,” said Janet. “This whole place is going under. It’s on suicide mission status.”
“I’m not even going to ask what that is.”
“The point is, Sarge has moved on.”
“Why don’t you just go do this thing yourself? Go shoot Sarge in the head. Shouldn’t be hard.”
“He’s got bodyguards. I need you to take them out.”
“Whatever,” muttered Art.
But he was getting more enthused by the minute. It wasn’t that he liked the plan. He could have cared less about the actual goal or outcome.
But it felt good to have someone telling him what to do again.
H
e’d been broken of his own will.
And Sarge had been too vague with what he’d wanted. And the rebels had been too unrealistic.
But this plan, it sounded plausible, with clear cut things for Art to do, things for him to accomplish.
“That’s the point of life, I suppose,” muttered Art. “You just need something to do with your time.”
“What are you talking about, you imbecile?”
“Quite the vocabulary, you’ve got.”
“That’s it. We’re getting out of here. Now we’re going to have to be quiet.”
Art felt Janet’s rough hands grabbing him. She pulled him up to the standing position, grunting with exertion.
Art stood there for a moment. His limbs felt like jelly.
He collapsed, falling into a heap on the floor. His head knocked against the floor. Hard.
“Idiot,” muttered Janet. “You’d better hope they didn’t hear that.”
They waited another ten minutes. At that point, Art was getting some feeling back into the parts of him that had gone numb.
“You can stand on your own now?”
“Yeah,” muttered Art.
Janet led him by the hand to the door. She opened it, and light flooded in.
Art’s eyes were overwhelmed. But it was only really the light of a couple candles flickering in what was otherwise nothing but darkness.
They were in the same house Art had been staying all along. He must have never been inside the room he’d been held prisoner before, since he hadn’t recognize it.
It was night. That meant everyone in his regiment would be sleeping.
They were supposed to keep a guard. Sarge’s orders and all. But everyone was so beaten, battered down, and always exhausted, that the whole guard thing had been dispensed with fairly early on in the formation of the unit. Before Sarge would get there in the morning, someone would scramble up and pretend to have been on watch all night, at the ready for anything that might have happened.
Sure, it meant that they might be attacked in the night if anyone was crazy enough to try to attack one of the militia’s own regiment houses. If enough people attacked, they might take the regiment by surprise, and Art and all the others would have died. But most of the men had just grumbled vaguely at the possibility. They’d known their lives weren’t worth that much. Even to themselves.
Janet didn’t have to tell Art to keep quiet.
They tiptoed through the hallway. They were upstairs. Several bedrooms had their doors open, with men and women slumbering on the floors. The beds weren’t there for some reason.
One guy was sleeping in the hallway, with his face up and his mouth open, snoring. Janet went first, stepping carefully over the man.
Art followed. He hoped his legs had made a full recovery. He still felt the rush of the pins and needles in them, as the blood flow returned them.
He made it over the guy.
They were headed down the stairs. As slow as possible.
Janet turned back to Art in the dim light of the flickering candles from upstairs. He could just barely see her face in the darkness.
They exchanged a knowing look. They both knew that the second to last step creaked loud enough to wake up someone.
Janet stepped carefully over it.
Art started to do the same.
And then he slipped. Maybe it was his leg. Maybe it was his footing.
It didn’t matter.
In trying to step over that creaky step, he lost his balance completely and fell with a crash down the last steps.
“What’s that?”
“If you’re going to wake me up, at least bring me a beer,” someone shouted.
“Come on,” hissed Janet, taking Art’s hand and pulling him forcefully to his feet.
They still had to walk past the main room, the one where Art had slept most nights.
They hurried along, Janet pulling his hand to get him to hurry up.
“Where’s my beer?” shouted someone’s sleepy voice.
“It’s Art!”
“He’s getting away.”
“Shit,” muttered Janet.
She pulled Art’s arm so hard it hurt.
They were almost out the front door. Janet had it opened.
Someone was behind them. Art heard the heavy footsteps.
He turned to look.
It was someone whose face he knew. But he didn’t know the man’s name. He was one of the more intense members. He wasn’t like Art. He hadn’t been an employed member of society. He’d been a criminal, and he had the look to prove it. He somehow kept his head shaved despite the lack of running water. It must have hurt to shave his head like that every day. His beard was long, and he was intensely muscular, despite the lack of food.
He was the kind of guy everyone stayed away from. If they needed something from him, they asked quietly in their most polite tones.
He wasn’t the sort of person you wanted to wake up in the middle of the night.
The man started towards Art. He moved fast. His eyes gleamed with an intensity that made Art shudder involuntarily.
A gunshot shattered the silence.
Art’s ears rang.
Art saw the bullet wound first. Right in the man’s side. But he didn’t fall.
Art turned to see Janet standing there, arm straight and long, a handgun held, her finger on the trigger.
The man kept coming. But more slowly.
Janet fired twice more.
Two more shots to the chest.
He fell.
The gunshots had woken up the entire house.
Now they had everyone after them. An entire regiment of this ragtag criminal militia.
Janet was already out the door, running across the suburban front lawn, towards the street.
Art dashed through the doorway, trying to keep up with her as best he could. But he was weak.
And he had no gun.
Art’s entire body was in pain. He was running across the lawn.
Up ahead, Janet was already way past him, disappearing down the street.
She turned back to look at him once. And she kept running.
Art tripped over something on the lawn, falling face down onto the ground.
Somehow, despite his weakness and intense pain, he managed to turn himself over.
The last thing he saw was the barrel of a revolver, pointed right at his face. He didn’t see the face. He didn’t know whether it was a man or woman. Or whether it had been someone he’d been vaguely friendly with once or twice or someone he’d offended in an accidental way.
It didn’t matter.
He was done.
26
MAX
Maybe he should have had Mandy go through the back window he’d just smashed out.
No, it was better this way. There wasn’t much room to squeeze through. It was hard to get the glass out of the edges.
She’d have been exposed.
Max looked up from where he squatted in the tiled-over pickup cab. Mandy’s butt was disappearing through the window.
No one from the SUVs had appeared.
Not yet.
All Mandy had to do was get to cover.
Max was more worried about her than he was himself.
He had his rifle ready. He kept it in the middle of the two cars, not knowing who’d exit first.
Mandy was out of the car.
“Go!” shouted Max.
One of the black SUV doors opened. Passenger side.
Max was quick. He took aim.
Hopefully Mandy was sprinting. But he couldn’t keep his eyes on her and get off a good shot at the same time.
A man appeared out of the SUV. He held a handgun that he leveled towards a target away from Max. Obviously he was aiming at Mandy.
The man was lowering his arm, his elbow bent.
Max was quicker.
He squeezed the trigger.
The shot rang out.
Max had hit him. He didn’t have the
time to see whether it’d been lethal.
Hopefully it had at least disabled him.
All Max had to do was buy Mandy enough time to get to cover where she could return fire.
Then Max could get out of the truck.
If they got that far.
Max was waiting. Waiting for the SUV doors to open.
These men couldn’t have been professionals or else they would have acted as a team.
Instead, Max imagined them waiting inside the SUVs, goading each other to get on out. Maybe they were picking straws or something, trying to decide who was next.
Well, if they were going to take their time, Max was going to take advantage of the situation.
Max climbed up through the cabin of the pickup, following the path Mandy had taken.
It wasn’t hard to do, except that his leg hurt as he tried to use it to push himself up.
He’d lost track of where Mandy had gone.
He threw himself over the edge, dropping down to the ground hard. Pain shot through his injured leg. He ignored it.
Max couldn’t see Mandy. She’d most likely gone to the trees.
Any second now, he expected a window to roll down or a door to open. But the black SUVs remained still. The backdoor to one of them remained hanging open. Their engines were still running.
Before Max could even take a couple steps in the direction where Mandy had probably hidden herself, one of the SUVs started forward.
It was driving fast.
Coming right towards Max. Bearing down on him.
Max lowered his rifle, aiming at the windshield, where the driver’s seat was.
He could have jumped out of the way. He could have run off.
But right now he had a clear shot at the driver. Even though he couldn’t see him.
If he could get off two clean shots, he knew he could probably take out the driver.
Max held his breath as he aimed.
The SUV’s engine was roaring. It was thirty feet away from him.
Max squeezed the trigger. The sound of the shot rang out.
A hole appeared in the darkened windshield.
The SUV kept barreling towards him.
Maybe fifteen feet away now.
Max might have killed the driver, his foot still pressing the accelerator. There was no way to know.
To be certain, he needed to get off another shot.
Defending Camp_A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller Page 15
