“Interesting isn’t the word I would use, more like trying. My brother and I had to toe the line all the time for everything, even when it came down to something simple like brushing our teeth or making our beds. Dad was the sergeant major, making him the sourpuss, while Mom always played the mediator. I don’t know if you can tell, but my brother is more disciplined. He’s always been better at conforming than me.”
Sasha nodded as smoke drifted from her teeth. “Oh, that’s as clear as Waterford crystal.” Reaching out, she put her fingers to Mark’s wind-chilled cheek. “For what it’s worth, kid, so far as looks are concerned, you won that battle with your brother. Keep your head up.”
Mark studied the woman awkwardly while his cheeks filled with color. “Um, thank you,” he said with a shiver as goosebumps rose on portions of his skin. They dissipated upon seeing his brother making his way back to them, and Mark’s focus slowly drifted away from Sasha. “How did that go?”
Chad shrugged, his hands held outward. “Actually, not as bad as I thought. The sweet tea went a long way. Tommy and Wayne both said their mom hasn’t had sugar to make sweet tea with in years, and then they asked me for more. They said we’re covered for twenty-four hours…so as long as we can get this done in a day, mum’s the word.”
Sasha turned away, heading for her ride. “Okay, no time to lose, then. Let’s blow this joint.” She straddled her bike and zipped up her jacket, reaching for a pair of leather gloves buried in the outside pockets, then pulled them on one finger at a time. Sasha then removed a black wool beanie from one of the saddlebags and pulled it on, down over her head, covering her ears.
Chad and Mark both jumped on their motorcycles and took a moment to put on helmets before starting them up.
Chad waved to Sasha. “Sure you don’t want a helmet? There’s an extra low-cut open-face one in my right saddlebag.”
Sasha chuckled. “I think I’ll do without this time around, if you don’t mind.”
Chad gave her a look of indifference. “Oh, I don’t mind at all. It’s your brain hanging in the balance, not mine.”
“Listen, stud,” Sasha barked. “In the span of my life, I’ve been abducted, beaten, tortured, stabbed, gang raped, and passed around like a communal Fleshlight through the germ-infested ranks of an outlaw motorcycle club. I’ve recently been shot three times, once in the head, only to somehow be parked here having to explain myself to you for some appalling reason. I’ve also been a two-pack-a-day smoker since the day I turned fourteen. If not even one of those things managed to kill me, not wearing a helmet today isn’t either. I’ll take my chances.”
Chad nodded. “Funny—you bringing up getting shot in the head. I was there that day. And that helmet you were wearing then? Probably saved your life.”
After the brothers started their bikes, the group departed Wolf Gap and headed into the Shenandoah County, Virginia, side of the National Forest along Wolf Gap Road. With Chad taking the lead, they motored down the narrow turns, soon leaving the forest boundaries and arriving at state Route 42.
Looking both ways along the abandoned highway, the group turned and headed east along the route Sasha had indicated, passing by neighborhoods of dilapidated homes and farms, and inactive power and telephone lines cascading between poles, long since forgotten.
Occasionally, along the way they would pass a car or truck that had been left in place by its owner for reasons unknown. Sometimes they’d be in the way, and the trio was forced to veer around. Sporadic skeletal structures, left over from livestock and other farm animals, could be seen lying about in the fields, haphazardly slaughtered long ago for food after that very luxury had become scarce.
At the intersection with Stoney Creek Road, Chad motioned for Mark and Sasha to pull forward in parallel with him. He asked for the map, and Sasha handed it over just as Mark turned and spotted two human corpses not far away in a drainage ditch. Both were beyond the point of being decomposed, their clothing barely clinging to what was left of their frames, acting as the only leftover indicator of who they had once been.
Mark hung his head to the side. He covered his mouth with a hand as his stomach churned. “Oh…my God,” he said, barely over his breath. “That’s…wretched.”
Sasha lit another cigarette and casually leaned over to examine the gruesome scene. “That one looks like he had his head smashed in with something big. His skull’s completely flattened.”
Chad glanced over while minding the map. “Bludgeoned? Or did somebody run him over?”
Sasha shrugged. “Could be either-or. The other body looks female, but it’s tough to tell. Not sure what happened to her…but there’s a few holes in her shirt. Probably shot to death.”
At that point, Mark emptied his guts onto the pavement near his feet.
“Look at it this way, kid,” Sasha said to Mark. “At least they’ve rotted past the point of smelling god-awful.”
Mark choked. “How can you say that? How can you be so passive?”
“That’s just the world we live in, kid, and I’m used to it. It’s natural selection, only the strong survive. It’s the way things were in the beginning, before we all got coddled and became soft. Nature’s cruelty is starting to take over again. I’m surprised you haven’t figured that out by now.”
Mark wiped his mouth on his sleeve and reached for a bottle of water strapped to his pack. “I’ve learned plenty already, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s difficult to look at.”
Chad handed Sasha back the map. “My brother used to have a hard time watching those National Geographic shows. You know, the ones in the Serengeti when the cheetahs would chase down the gazelles and claw out their entrails, or when a lion would go to town on an antelope’s ass while it screamed the whole time from being eaten alive.” He chuckled. “Mother Nature can be a real bitch sometimes, right, bro?”
Mark gave Chad the finger. “You can shut the hell up anytime, bro.”
The trio pulled away from the intersection with the corpses and followed the road until eventually passing through the town limits of Edinburg and, not long after, finding their way to the road leading into the last neighborhood ever to be ransacked by the Marauders MC.
Sasha leaned in and turned onto the road, only to pull to a stop a few yards in, waving both hands down towards the pavement. She promptly shut off her engine.
Hopping off her bike, she instructed both Chad and Mark to do the same while pushing hers off the road and over into the drainage ditch with urgency. “We gotta find something to cover these up with. Trees, bushes, trash, I don’t know…something.”
“What did you see?” Chad asked. “What’s over there?”
Sasha whipped her head around and several long blond-streaked strips of hair slipped from the confines of her beanie onto her shoulder. “You didn’t see the trucks?”
Chad glanced at his brother. “We’ve been seeing cars and trucks and whatnot the whole way here, but no one’s been around. What’s the difference?”
Sasha pointed down the road to the cul-de-sac. “There’s a whole convoy of them…and they’re not supposed to be there! That’s the difference, stud.”
Chad’s eyes grew wide. “I knew it! See, Mark? This is exactly what I was worried about.”
Mark had begun shoveling piles of leaves from the ditch and areas surrounding, attempting to camouflage his motorcycle. “Just shut up and help me, okay?”
Chad sighed and sped to his brother’s aid. He began removing gear and weapons from the cycles while Sasha attempted to get a better look without being noticed.
“Do either of you have a pair of binoculars?”
Mark uncovered his pack and unzipped a pocket, removing a set of armored binoculars, then tossed them to Sasha.
Sasha spent a moment studying the scene at the end of the road through the magnified lenses. Parked in a semicircular fashion, lined up one behind the other, was a collection of vehicles, mostly SUVs and at least one school bus that had been repainted black
to match the others.
Then she saw someone she recognized. “Well, look who it is,” Sasha hissed. “Seth Bates. And he’s giving orders now. I never knew that beiber was good for anything, other than being somebody’s bitch.”
“Who’s Seth Bates?” Chad asked, glancing over his shoulder. “Friend of yours?”
Sasha sighed and removed the binoculars from her eyes. “Ha! Hardly. He’s a light-in-the-loafers DHS dweeb.”
“I’m sorry…did you just say he’s DHS?” Chad inquired.
“That’s what I said.”
“How do you know that?” Mark asked, looking unsettled.
Sasha pranced over, her boot heels sinking into the soft grass alongside the road. “Well, my MC did work for them,” she said, moving to get down on one knee. “And even if I didn’t know him, all those blacked-out vehicles and tinted windows would be a dead giveaway.”
Chad huffed and grabbed his water bottle while falling back into the tall grass on his rear. “Great. That’s just great. Now what do we do, bro? This was your foolproof plan. Hope you got a plan B hidden up your ass somewhere, since this one appears to be FUBAR.”
“What if I told you I did have a plan B and it didn’t involve you?”
Chad spit out his water. “And what if I told you to go to hell?”
“Oh, please,” Sasha griped, scooting herself in between Chad and Mark while unzipping her jacket to reach for her smokes. “The two of you are brothers, I get that, but this pantywaist bickering has got to stop.” She pulled out a cigarette from the pack, lit it, and pulled on it merrily. “Now, I’ve never been an expert on strategy or tactics, and I’ve never once pretended to be the smartest person in the bunch, but seems to me, regardless of what our plans are, the first thing we need to do now is find a place to hide. And I mean vanish.”
Chad nodded, the outline of his face becoming stern. “You’re right. If these guys see us here, we’re screwed. Next question is, what do we do after that?”
Sasha noticed Mark’s anxiety and handed her cigarette to him after taking a long drag. “Take a puff, kid. It soothes the nerves.”
Mark looked at her strangely before taking a drag and coughing out the exhaled smoke from his lungs.
Sasha patted him on the back to coax the gagging away, then took the cigarette from him before he dropped it. “Hang in there. It passes.” She smiled and rolled her eyes. “I remember my first time…well, barely.” She turned to Chad, offering him a toke, but he refused. “How far away do you think we are from where we…I mean, where you guys live?”
Chad shrugged. “Ten, maybe fifteen miles,” he replied. It’s a long way to go on foot.” He pointed to Sasha’s black leather riding boots, which carried a one-and-a-half-inch heel. “Especially for you and those shit kickers.”
Sasha put the cigarette between her lips and tucked her hair back under her hat. “These aren’t shit kickers—they’re ass stompers. And they’re not as bad as they look…actually pretty comfortable, and they provide great ankle protection. But it’s the Dr. Scholl’s insoles that do the trick…feels like walking on air.” She cocked her head to the side, lifting her brow. “I remember wearing sneakers when I was a little girl, nice ones, you know? I think they were Reeboks or something else my parents could barely afford. Ever since the MC took me in, it’s been nothing but black leather boots on these footsies. They kinda grow on you, you know?”
A smirk grew across Chad’s face and he shook his head, attempting not to laugh. “No, I don’t know.”
“It’s about time you loosened up.”
Chapter 7
Mason residence
Trout Run Valley
Wednesday, December 1st
Her senses gradually returning to her, Grace took in a breath, exhaled, and opened her eyes.
Grace knew she wasn’t at home, and for the moment, she didn’t know exactly where she was. She was lying horizontally on her back, and there was a cobweb-covered, stippled ceiling above her. The flickering of nearby candlelight was casting a mixture of shadows on a wall covered in faux-wood paneling to her right.
She rolled herself over in the other direction and found a familiar face, that of her neighbor from across the road. “Kim?”
Kim Mason smiled at her, but it wasn’t one of her normal, calm, hospitable smiles.
“Where am I?”
“In the basement,” Kim replied in a whisper.
“Um…how long was I out?”
“Just a few hours. Not long. Not too long at all.”
Fighting away the mental fuzz, Grace tried to recollect what had happened. “The last thing I remember was feeling like my insides were being twisted up something fierce. It was some of the worst cramps I’ve ever felt…and I get the regular ones pretty bad anyway, you know? Then John ran off for help. Where is he? Is he still here?”
Kim didn’t answer.
Grace brought the back of her hand to her forehead. “Shoot me straight…what’s wrong with me, Kim? I feel sweaty and sticky, and my stomach feels like there’s a gerbil making a nest in it. Am I sick? Like Lee and the others? I have a fever, don’t I?”
Kim shook her head leisurely and, not long after, glanced for a brief second over her shoulder. “You might have a slight temperature, but that’s not uncommon for anyone dealing with stress. It’s nothing to be worried about.”
“What do you mean? Something’s wrong with me, right?” Grace’s voice grew panicky. “I know there is…that’s why I threw up. That’s why I passed out. I’m sick, aren’t I? It’s just my luck for something like that to happen.”
Kim didn’t respond, her attention too absorbed on the goings-on behind her. As she reached over to place a hand on Grace in an effort to quiet her down, a man whom Grace didn’t recognize emerged from the candlelit shadows.
In one hand, he grasped a bolt-action hunting rifle with a wooden stock, while his other hand was busily feeding a length of jerky into his mouth. He gnawed on the meat from the side of his lips, gripping it with his molars while moving his hand away and closer to a revolver he had holstered in a cross draw.
He inspected Kim, then heeded Grace. “You two need ta keep it down over here. Yins all know those be the rules. And rules is ’sposed ta be followed, not broken like yins all be doing right this very minute.”
“I’m sorry,” Kim said, “it’s just that the young lady here woke up only moments ago. She passed out earlier, you see…it happened a little while before you all arrived. She’s not privy to the rules just yet…but I’ll do my best to keep her quiet.”
“That be the right thing ta do, ma’am,” the man said, his voice coated in a drawl Kim had no problem comprehending, but Grace couldn’t distinguish. “Yins all don’t wants ta know the consequences for breakin’ rules. There be consequences for rule breakin’ and folks doing the rule breakin’.” The man nodded to both of them and cradled the rifle in his arms before wandering away.
Grace jutted herself up onto her elbows, encountering a dizzy spell. She tapped her index finger on Kim’s arm. “Okay, who the hell was that? Did I wake up in the Twilight Zone or a rerun of Duck Dynasty?”
Kim placed a finger over her lips. “Shhh. Grace, we should do as he says. I think he’s serious about the consequences he’s talking about.”
Grace began to look perturbed. “Consequences? Kim, what is going on here? What happened after I passed out?”
“We got ourselves some visitors. They just sort of dropped in on us.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Grace said, careful to mind the volume of her voice. “But who the hell are they?”
“We don’t know.”
“Okay…how many of them are there?”
“I’m afraid we don’t know the answer to that either. All I can tell you is there’s enough of them.”
Grace squinted. “Enough of them? You mean more of them than us.”
Kim only nodded and looked on.
Grace sat up a bit more and took a look around the confines o
f Kim’s basement. Beds had been brought in for those who had fallen ill, including Lee, Scott Schmidt, Peter Saunders, and Peter’s son Liam.
Amy Saunders was sitting at her husband’s bedside, their son Jacob mere inches from her, a terrified look on his face. Whitney Schmidt and her daughter, Brooke, were tending to Scott, each taking turns placing cool, damp washcloths on his forehead and shoulders.
But the basement now contained other faces that, as far as Grace knew, weren’t technically supposed to be there. Sarah and Emily Taylor sat nervously in the Masons’ chair and a half, not far from the door safeguarding the secured confines of Fred’s gun cave. And every female member of the Brady family, sans George Brady’s wife, Elisabeth, were huddled together in the middle of the floor, their husbands and sons nowhere to be found.
“One minute, this place looks like the intensive care unit at Walter Reed. And the next minute, it reminds me of some strange underground redneck feminists’ rally,” Grace whispered. “By my estimation, we’re being held captive down here…but where is everybody else, Kim? Where’s John? Bryan? And the other…I don’t know, menfolk?”
Kim shook her head slowly. “We don’t know. They divided us up not long after they got here.” She paused. “They’re keeping the men elsewhere.”
“Where? And why?”
“I don’t know, Grace.”
“Do we know what they want?”
Kim pursed her lips. “Well, they haven’t exactly told us, but I have a pretty damn good idea what it is.”
Grace took another long look around the room. “Where’s Megan? I don’t see her anywhere, either.”
Kim hesitated, her body beginning to tremble. “I don’t know. Like I said, they separated us, and they…they took her, too.”
Chapter 8
Divided We Stand Page 8
