The cars parked along the street didn’t belong to her mother.
She suppressed her emotions and told herself not to jump to conclusions. She forced herself to assume no one was inside, that it was empty and her mother was somewhere else. Somewhere safe. Preferably at the lodge.
She bent down and picked up the spare key from under the fake rock. Mass-produced and sold around the world, she wondered how much of a failsafe it really was. She used it to unlock the door and pushed it open.
Katie stepped into the hallway and listened intently. It felt cold and dark in that space.
She raised her voice and called out as she had done a thousand times before. “Mum? Are you home?”
Silence answered her, and the tingling sensation at the back of her mind turned to disappointment.
“Looks like she’s not here, huh?” Darryl said.
“I guess not.”
She pushed the front room door open. Silence again. Has it always been so small in here? It was cramped with them all inside. Her eyes scanned the floor and her nostrils flared, hoovering up every scent she could pick up. Musty fabric and dust-filled air. No welcome package like the one she discovered in Darryl’s house.
“I’m desperate for the loo,” Ronnie said.
“The toilets might have one good flush in them – if you’re lucky,” Katie said.
Ronnie leaned his rifle against the wall.
“Have fun,” Tanya said. “Let me do all the work. As usual.”
“I’m just taking a slash,” Ronnie said. “Do you have any idea how long it takes you to pee compared to me?”
“Not enough. I’ve seen the stain mark on your trousers from where you haven’t shaken properly.”
“I’m a busy man.” He disappeared around the corner and down the hall.
Tanya placed a large hand on Katie’s shoulder. “Sorry she’s not here, babe.”
“It’s all right. I didn’t think she would be anyway. It’s just… I don’t know. I hoped she would be.”
“We all hoped right alongside you. When your brother and grandfather get here, they’ll be hoping too. I’m sure she’s okay. Your father did a good job training her.”
“She refused to do a lot of it.”
“But she did some of it, right? It’s funny what you absorb, especially when you’re married to the instructor. Look at me and Ronnie. Our old man was in the military. I know it’s hard to believe but there was a time when neither of us showed any interest in fighting. Except each other. Our dad saw the trouble we’d cause if left to our own devices and took us to the cadets.”
“Woods for us.”
Tanya’s eyes twinkled. “Any harsh and inhospitable place is good, I suppose. When we got into fights at school, his first question wasn’t if we were okay, but how well we did. ‘There were four of them!’ we would say, but he didn’t care. ‘Learn to fight one man effectively and you can fight a hundred.’ Now, I can’t say I’ve ever fought a hundred men at once but he was right about concentrating on one opponent at a time.” She rested her beefy hand on Katie’s shoulder. “Trust me, your mother will be fine.”
She checked over her shoulder. “I’d better go check on my brother. He always was the one who got in trouble. Just because he’s two minutes younger, he seems to think it gives him license to mess around. Be right back.”
She leaned her rifle beside her brother’s and disappeared down the hall.
Darryl fingered the porcelain figurines in the cabinets.
“My mother liked collecting them,” Katie said. “Don’t ask me why.”
“My mum liked collecting them too. They seem to get to a certain age and figurines are all the rage.”
“Maybe it’s to replace the children who left the nest?”
“Maybe. Except we didn’t leave yet.”
Haven’t we?
An unfamiliar voice jerked them from their conversation.
A gaunt man with a scruffy beard leaned against the partition wall leading to the dining room. “Trust me, kiddies, you don’t want to know the kind of trophies I collect.”
Katie eyed the rifles leaning against the wall and judged the distance. Three yards. If she dived for them–
“Don’t even think about it, Missy.” A second man stepped between her and the guns.
They carried machetes blunt, chipped, and dirty with crud and dried blood. They’d been used recently.
Katie thought back to the horrific hacked bodies in Darryl’s house. Were these people responsible? Probably. Or people associated with them. She wondered how many bones had to be hacked for the blades to end up chipped like theirs, how many innocent lives had been stolen.
Not a small number.
Katie squared up to the leader. “You should get out of here. There’s a lot more of us on our way.”
“Oh. You mean like these two.”
The twins were hustled into the dining room and bent over the dining table. Caught unaware again and taken prisoner.
Well, this is just great.
63
The men knew their knots.
Wrists and ankles.
Katie flexed her arms and legs to loosen the bonds a little but it was no use. The twins sat on the floor opposite her, working at their bonds the same way she was. The rope was coarse and rough. She doubted it would snap but there was no harm in trying.
The gang consisted of three men. One of the men kept watch on them at all times but focused most of his attention on his dirty fingernails. He had more piercings in his face than Katie could count. His cohorts busied themselves with emptying the kitchen cupboards.
They were likely to die soon at the hands of these people. She thought again about the bodyparts in Darryl’s front room and the bitter hatred that must have consumed people to commit such a terrible crime. She did not doubt that these people would do the same thing to them once they were done harvesting the food.
Beside her, Darryl whimpered and whined around the rag jammed in his mouth. The one in Katie’s mouth tasted of soap. It was the tea towel from the kitchen. Darryl’s fear reminded her of her sense of impending death when she faced down the military to give the twins their much-needed distraction.
Despite knowing the kind of punishment she could expect at the hands of these thugs, she didn’t cower. She didn’t feel the tight grip of fear she experienced the first time she faced it on that narrow country lane in the middle of nowhere. At her centre, she was as calm as an icy lake in the dead of winter.
The other two men in the gang stood with bags filled to bursting at their feet. One made a joke and the other snorted. Snorter was a tall streak of piss with giant ears. The shorter man wore a mohawk on top of his head as if it would make him look taller. It didn’t.
Holes. Big Ears. Mohawk.
The terrible trio whispered amongst themselves, their voices still audible to them all.
“Want the big one?” Big Ears said.
“I’ve always had a thing for big women.” Mohawk licked his lips. “But today I fancy something a little different. I’ve always liked young girls. The younger the better.”
“What about me?” Holes said.
Mohawk, the unelected leader, glared at Holes. “What do you mean, ‘What about me?’ You’re dating our sister. Are you saying she’s not enough woman for you?”
Holes shrank back. “No. No, of course not. I just thought–”
Mohawk sneered. “You just thought you could have a little taste, is that it?”
Holes turned hangdog as if his bones had been removed.
Mohawk nudged him with his elbow. “I’ll let you have a little taste. I know how boring playing with one woman can be.”
Holes brightened up. “Aw, really, boss?”
“I said so, didn’t I?” Mohawk glared at Holes, who immediately shrank back again.
Big Ears strutted forward and eyed Tanya closely. “Are you sure it’s a woman? I’ll sure have egg on my face if I pull her undies down and find more than I exp
ected staring me in the face.” He shook his head. “And why are we scraping the bottom of the barrel when we’ve got a real beauty in our midst already?”
He was referring to Katie.
“She’s mine!” Mohawk bellowed. He thrust his bulging stomach out to bounce Big Ears aside.
“Sure, she’s yours,” Big Ears said. “But that don’t mean we can’t all have a taste.”
Mohawk’s temper subsided. “Just so long as I get first dibs on her.”
Big Ears tapped Mohawk on the shoulder with his elbow. “Don’t you mean, first dick?”
Mohawk roared with laughter, slapping the skinny man on the back and almost knocking him to the floor. He wiped the tears out of his eyes and bent down to pick Katie up.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
The group struggled against their bonds. Katie and Tanya fought to stay on the floor, Ronnie to rise to his feet. Darryl didn’t move a muscle, scared witless.
Katie muffled around the cloth in her mouth.
“It’s no use pleading for mercy, dearie,” Mohawk said. “We’ve already taken all your food. Now we’re taking a little boom-boom fun.”
He pulled the front of Katie’s jacket open to peer at her cleavage. She felt the cold metal of his knife bark against her flesh.
“I do prefer it when they’re still warm and breathing,” he said. “But if you keep struggling, make no bones about it, I’ll jab this in you till you still yourself. You hear me?”
Loud and clear. Katie’s heart thudded like a runaway train in her throat. Salty tears ran down her cheeks at the horror about to befall her.
Mohawk tucked his knife away and took a step back. “Let’s have her over the dining table.”
The other two men gibbered unintelligibly as they grabbed her by the arms and hauled her to her feet. Katie pulled and kicked and flailed but it was no good.
“Remember what I said about struggling,” Mohawk said.
Katie’s eyes bulged as they dragged her across the front room. She threw her legs out to wrap around her father’s armchair but there was no grip to be had with its leather upholstery. She tried again and managed to hook her leg around the partition wall.
A moment of sweet relief before they unwound her ankles and tugged her away from it. They tossed her into the dining table, its edge barking against her thighs. She turned to run but Big Ears was there to smack her across the face, knocking her back down.
“Hey, no hitting,” Mohawk said. “I like her face pretty. Not that I’ll see it.”
Katie screamed around the fabric, gurgling bubbles with the thick cloying stench of washing up liquid absorbed in its threads.
“And where do you think you’re going?” Holes said to someone she couldn’t see.
Katie heard a series of sharp slapping noises as Holes issued a beatdown on one of the others.
The blow to Katie’s face had an unexpected effect; the rag jammed in her mouth loosened slightly. She tasted fresh air out the corner of her mouth. She prodded and probed at the rag with her tongue to force it free. It tasted horrible but she fought against her gag reflex.
Mohawk pressed himself against Katie, pinning her in place. She felt it dig into the back of her thighs, prodding and probing at her soft skin. He reached around to unbutton her jeans. Katie pressed herself forward, crushing the man’s fingers and making it more difficult for him to work the buttons.
“Leave off!” Mohawk said.
He punched her in the side, winding her and making her gasp for air. The cloth protruded further from her mouth.
Mohawk unbuttoned her jeans and tugged them so they slid down her legs to the floor.
Mohawk leaned back and took Katie in. “A thing of beauty.” He eyed her midnight underwear appreciatively. His grin morphed into a dark scowl. “Will you get them to quit their mumbling already? Christ!”
“Quiet!” Big Ears belted first one twin, then the other.
Darryl whimpered louder and shut his eyes, the tears spilling down his cheeks. Shock had already taken him.
Please Grandfather, Katie thought. Come in and find these people now. Show them what you do to rapists and murderers.
But praying wasn’t going to get the job done. If she wanted to get out of this, she was going to have to do it herself. She worked harder at the cloth and spat enough out so one half hung from the corner of her lips.
Mohawk hooked a finger around her underwear and pulled it down. He ran a hand roughly over her soft skin and smacked her hard. “Are you a virgin, girl? I suppose we’ll find out when I fuck you bloody.”
“Do it and I’ll never tell you where the biggest stash of survival supplies you’ve ever laid eyes on is!”
The words tumbled from Katie in a cascade. She didn’t have time to think about what she would say. If she had, she might have fashioned something less abrasive, but it was out now.
“Local stores?” Mohawk said. “We already hit them. So did about a hundred other gangs. There’s nothing left.”
“Not the local stores. Somewhere bigger, better. A lodge out in the woods.”
Mohawk shook his head. “There’s no lodge in the woods.”
“There is. My father owns it. He was a prepper. He always knew something big would happen, that something would ruin the world once and for good. He knew it. That’s why he prepared a place for us to survive while everyone else fought over the scraps.”
The silence that followed told her she at least had piqued his interest.
“Look at the photos on the mantelpiece,” Katie said. “You’ll see photos of us at the lodge.”
Mohawk didn’t move. “Jason, would you do the honours, please?”
One of the men – Katie couldn’t see which – approached the mantelpiece and peered at the photos. “She’s telling the truth, boss.”
“How do we know this isn’t some holiday you took once?” Mohawk still hadn’t turned her around yet.
Katie was still very much on the razor’s edge.
“In the kitchen, you’ll find keys,” she said. “They’re for the front door. We’ll need them.”
“What for?”
“For when you take me to the lodge.”
Mohawk chuckled and rubbed a hand over Katie’s soft folds. Katie shivered inside but didn’t react outwardly. “Just checking to see how big your balls are. You feel nice and tight. Juicy too, I’d wager.”
He nodded to Holes, who headed into the kitchen.
“Second hook from the right,” Katie said. “It’s got a mini Swiss Army knife for a keychain.”
A moment later, Holes returned and he handed the keys to Mohawk. He scratched his chin with it.
“This could be a key for anything,” he said.
“It could be but it’s not.”
“You would say anything when you’re afraid.”
“I’m not afraid of you.” Katie was proud her voice remained calm and steady.
“Sure you are.” He grabbed her, spun her around, and held her by the neck, his thumb pressed hard against her larynx. He looked into her eyes at her hateful expression. He was mildly surprised. “Huh. It’s a rare thing. To see someone unafraid of death.”
Katie stared back at him openly. “I didn’t say I wasn’t afraid of death. I said I’m not afraid of you.”
Mohawk spread her legs and leaned closer. “They’re the same thing, girl.”
She didn’t look away, though she writhed tip to toe on the inside. “Do you want the supplies or don’t you?”
Mohawk stared at her for what felt like hours. “Why should I believe you? A person in your situation would say anything. Why shouldn’t me and my boys tear you apart right here, right now?”
“Because you’ll never find it by yourselves.”
“Oh, we’ll find it. You’ll take us there. After we’re done with you.”
“Do that, and I’ll never tell you what you want to know. And I won’t tell you the code for where the weapons are k
ept either.”
Mohawk raised his machete to her face. “You’ll tell me. I’ll make you tell me. And if hurting you won’t do it, then I’ll hurt your friends.”
“There’s a funny thing that runs in my family. We’re a spiteful bunch. My grandfather once stopped talking to his brother because he said ‘Good morning’ and his brother didn’t say the same thing back. He didn’t speak to him for twenty years.”
“So?”
“So, if you don’t like my conditions and you decide to take me anyway, then hurt me or my friends, I’ll never tell you a single thing. Ever. You’ll end up killing every last one of us before I tell you a bloody thing.”
And by God, she meant it.
Mohawk stared her in the face and must have seen that every word was true. And it was. She didn’t want to die, but she could be as immovable as a rock if he tried to renege on her offer.
Big Ears edged closer. “Boss, you can’t seriously believe–”
“Shut up.” Mohawk never took his eyes from Katie. “Blow me down, if she’s not telling the truth. Me and mine are the same way.” He turned his head slightly, eyes still unmoving as he spoke to Big Ears. “You remember cousin Earl?”
“Wish I didn’t. A mean son of a bitch.”
“As mean as what her grandfather sounds like. Such traits tend to skip a generation or two before it comes back with a vengeance. Are you like him, my girl? That’s the question.”
“There’s only one way to know for sure.” Katie met his eyes levelly. Even laying there with her neck aching at the awkward angle and her jeans hanging from an ankle, and her private parts exposed to everyone to see, she commanded the room.
But the decision, ultimately, was up to him.
Katie shrugged. “It’s no skin off my nose if you decide to give up the biggish stash of food, water, medicine, and weapons you’re ever going to find. If you’re going to do this, then get on with it.”
Mohawk’s lips curled into an appreciative smile. “How far is it?”
“Twenty miles.”
Big Ears spoke in his ear. “It’s a lot of fuel to waste if she’s wrong.”
“Not if she’s right. It’d be the best bloody investment we ever made. We’re out here, picking like buzzards amongst the carcasses. We only ever find enough food and water to tide us over, but what we’re looking for, what we’re really out here trying to discover, is a goldmine. The supplies to make us rich men in this new world we find ourselves in. That’s what this girl is offering us and I don’t believe she’s lying.”
Cut Off (Book 2): Cut Throat Page 21
