Rogues Journey

by Mack Norman

  The Mayor responded, “You can take one of the Clan’s trucks, but I can’t get any volunteers to go north with you, so I guess we will miss out on the supplies. We’ll give you a weeks’ worth of food, two of the AR-15s we took from the Clan, ammunition, and a tank of gas. I’m afraid that’s all we can give you for your trip.”

  Amy hugged the Mayor and thanked her.

  “Becky, you have a great town, and once things calm down a bit, we will bring medical supplies down to you.”

  Max hugged Becky, and then they said goodbye to the Sheriff and his deputies and headed to the old pickup. Max helped load the old Chevy truck with their gear, and then they headed north

  They drove up Highway 101 driving around stalled cars and other obstructions in the road. Amy laid her head on Max’s shoulder and said, “Those were good people back there, and it felt good helping them. I was tempted to stay. Were you?”

  Max looked down at the top of Amy’s head and said, “No because I know that you will never be happy until you get Tony to be yours or finally see him for what he is. It would never work out because you would leave after a month or two.”

  Amy gently bit Max’s ear and whispered, “Babe, I do care for you, and you are probably the only man in my entire life that have treated me like a desirable woman and loved me in return.”

  “I feel a but coming.”

  Amy responded, “Yes, the but is that I have been in love with Tony since we were kids and that is hard to change.”

  ∞

  Chapter ❸

  Who can you trust?

  Max drove across the Wheeler Dam wondering if that girl Jackie would see him when they got back to the warehouse. He still loved Amy but now knew she would never stop her quest to get Tony to love her. He didn’t want to be too close to her when the shit hit the fan, and Amy realized that Tony didn’t give two shits about her and just used her to get his dirty work done. He felt she would either go berserk and go on a killing spree or kill herself.

  Max made the turn onto Highway 72 East. He cruised at 45 MPH when unexpectedly there were several impacts against the truck that could have only been bullets. He began swerving and continued away from the sound of the gunshots. Amy woke up for a second, and he told her that everything was okay and to go back to sleep. What he didn’t know was that not everything was okay, because a stray bullet had ricocheted off the frame of the truck and nicked the trucks old rusty gas tank.

  They were a few miles out of Lawrenceburg on Highway 43 when Max noticed the gas gauge had dropped dramatically. He woke Amy and pulled to the side of the road to see what had happened. He left the truck running and checked the exhaust, which looked normal, and not the black smoke that would indicate the mixture was too rich.

  “Amy, please stand watch while I look under the hood for a gas leak.”

  He opened the hood of the old Chevy and saw the 235 cubic inch inline six engine that had been in service for many years from the 1950s into the 1970’s. He didn’t see a leak, so he crawled under the truck to examine the gas tank. He saw the problem as he scooted under the truck. There was a steady drip that was coming from the back of the tank from a shiny new scrape. Max got out from under the truck, searched the toolbox in the bed for a screwdriver, and removed a small screw from the engine bay.

  Max crawled back under the truck and screwed the screw into the small hole in the tank stopping the drip. He watched it for a minute and saw no more drips. He came back from under the truck and Amy exclaimed, “You stink like gasoline. Can you clean that smell off before we get in the truck?”

  They searched the vehicle but only found some old wet napkins and a bottle of hand cream. Max used the hand cream, and then the napkins, which cut the smell down considerably, but Amy still cracked the window to let fresh air in every now and then.

  “Now we need to find some gas. The tank was full a couple of hours ago, now it has less than an eighth of a tank. We’ll check the stalled cars and then stop in Lawrenceburg if we don’t find any on the highway.”

  They stopped several times but never found any gas. Amy asked, “How would you get the gas? We don’t have a siphon hose,” then she added, “Please don’t get the shit all over you this time.”

  “Princess, I will stick your nose in the next puddle if you don’t stop picking on me about stinking. Seriously, we do need to get me some soap and water after we get the tank full. The damn smell is gagging me also. Oh, to answer your question, I would cut a heater hose and use it to siphon the gas.”

  Max stopped at the next abandoned farmhouse and cut a six-foot length of garden hose. He then went into the house and brought out some soap and towels. He washed his hands and said, “Now I smell better and can wash my hands again for the Princess with the delicate nose.”

  “Now you smell like Lavender ethyl gasoline. I do admire you for trying though.”

  They drove on, toward Highway 64, which intersected with Highway 43. There was a barricade in the middle of Highway 43. It was located under the overpass and manned by two men armed with shotguns. They slowed and drove cautiously to the roadblock before stopping twenty feet from the old truck that was used to block the road.

  Max got out of the truck and said, “How are you doing today? My wife and I need some gas so we can get home to Nashville.”

  “What have you got to trade? The boss has all of the gas in this area and will only take high dollar trades for his gas?”

  “I was wondering who took all of the gas from the stalled cars. Where do I see your boss to work up a trade?”

  “We have to check you out and see if you have anything worth trading for before you can enter Lawrenceburg,” said a man with yellow teeth and a long scraggly beard.

  They walked up to the truck where Amy was now standing. They poked around and said, “We’ll take the ARs, and the boss might just want a small sample of that blonde in trade for a gallon of gas.

  Well, that hit Max wrong, and he punched the man in the jaw. They tangled while the other man watched. Amy slid up to the second man and killed him with an open handed chop to his nose driving the bone up and into his brain. Max finally got the better of the first man and stuck a knife into his gut and then between his ribcage. Both men lay dead. Now Max and Amy had to figure out how to get gas without dying in the process.

  Max checked the old truck’s gas tank, and it was empty. Max piled the men in the back of his pickup, drove them a mile back down the road, and dumped them in a ravine a half mile off on a side road. Before they got back in the truck to leave, Amy looked at Max and said, “Let’s go around Lawrenceburg and see if we can find gas at a farm or something. I’m sick and tired of being viewed as something old, sick perverts want in trade for a gallon of $4.00 gas.”

  Max grinned and replied, “Babe I always thought that you were worth at least $10 worth of gas.”

  She turned to Max, shoved him to the ground, and began tickling him as she said, “You son of a bitch I’ll teach you to talk that way.”

  Max reached up, pulled her down to him, and kissed her as he crushed her body into his chest. She resisted for a second, and then she returned the kiss and began ripping his clothes off him. They feverishly undressed and made love on a blanket on the cold hard ground. There was no lovemaking. This was lust and was over as fast as it started.

  “Max, we have to stop doing this,” Amy said as her warm body lay on top of him.

  “I know, but I still love you even though you could care less about me,” Max moaned.

  Amy was ready for a second round when she said, “I guess we could stay friends with benefits until I marry Tony.”

  The mention of his rival pissed Max off and ruined the mood for him as he rolled out from under his sometime lover and said, “That killed the mood, and besides I’m freezing my ass off.”

  Max got back in the truck and turned the heater on high as he waited for Amy to dress. She got into the warm truck and said, “I’m sorry Max, but I do care about you, and if I weren’t in
love with Tony I’d be yours.”

  Max pushed the pedal to the floor as he said, “Well I guess second place ain’t bad until the game ends and the prizes are awarded.”

  “Max, what does that mean?”

  “Babe it means this is the last time I tell you that I love you and Tony doesn’t give a shit about you. He told me that he hopes you find another man and stop bothering him in front of his new woman,” Max blurted out in anger and then wished he could take the words back.

  Amy didn’t get mad, but she didn’t speak with Max as they took backroads around Lawrenceburg. They were on a back street behind the Walmart on the north end of town when Max saw a man loading some boxes into the back of a truck while another stood guard.

  “Amy we need gas, and I’ll bet that truck has gas. Let’s rob those two thugs. They have to work for that “boss” those guys mentioned. I’ll get their attention while you get the drop on them and we tie them up. Then we take the gas and get out of Dodge before anyone knows we’re here,” Max proposed.

  Everything worked as planned until it didn’t work at all. Max got their attention while Amy snuck up behind them, but neither saw the men tailing them in the old VW van parked a half block away. They had the men hogtied when Amy felt the cold steel of a rifle against her neck.

  “Hands up! Don’t flinch a muscle or I’ll kill the girl,” one of the men said in a deep husky voice.

  They both saw four guns pointed at them and knew they were screwed this time. They couldn’t fight their way out of this predicament, and both were resigned to finding another way out of this mess. The men took their knives but missed Amy’s small boot knife. One of the men tied their hands behind them, and then he rubbed his hand on Amy’s ass when he finished her restraints.

  Max saw him out of the corner of his eye and said, “Buddy, you just signed your death warrant.”

  He slapped Max and said, “Big talk for an asshole with his hands tied behind his back.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about me. I would just shoot you for playing with my wife’s ass. She cut a man’s dick off for pissing her off earlier this week, and you should be scared of her, not me.”

  The man reflexively protected his privates and said, “The boss will be happy to see you two. Not many people kill two of his best men and then try to rob two more in broad daylight. If I were you, I’d be the one scared.”

  Max said, “It was too easy to rob you clowns so we couldn’t resist.”

  The larger of the men backhanded Max splitting his lip, which resulted in blood running down his neck and on to his coat. The men helped Max and Amy into the VW van, drove back to the center of town, and stopped in front of the town’s administrative building where the gang had its headquarters. They were pushed out of the van and marched up the long steps into the building where they were made to wait in a large lobby for the boss to see them.

  Amy was continually looking for a way to escape. She saw several items that could be made into weapons and then she saw an open door that hid a room full of rifles. Max surveyed the room and noticed that all of the thugs had side arms, and an AR hung over their shoulders. He saw the coat rack and golf club in the far corner that Amy had seen. He was planning an escape when a man in a suit walked up to them.

  “The boss will see you now,” the man said as he cut their bindings.”

  They rubbed their wrists as they were ushered into a large office with a huge wooden desk and an overstuffed chair. Amy was close to the window and saw something that made her cringe. Her eyes shifted to a man standing at the large window puffing on a cigar and talking into a satellite phone. They couldn’t hear the conversation but were both amazed the phone worked. He continued to face the window as he told them to have a seat.

  They sat down, and he turned around to face them and said, “You are staring at my phone. Yes, it works. My boss called me a few hours before the power went out with instructions. One was to put certain equipment in steel drums, and the other was to build an army to take over St. Louis. Damn my luck, I was driving with three of my men to play golf at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Courses in Florence, Alabama. I was stuck here and started my outpost here, deep in hillbilly land.”

  Max replied, “I write Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction, and EMP blasts are supposed to kill all electronics, satellites included.”

  The man responded, “I’m not a frigging scientist. My boss says to use the damn phone I use the damn phone. Now back to the subject. I hear that you two have been wreaking havoc in my little town. Why are you disrespecting me and my community?”

  Max was trying to piece together what the man said when Amy started to speak, and the man said forcefully, “Women should keep their mouths closed when men are speaking. Now, why are you pissing on my parade?”

  Max looked over at Amy who was reaching for her boot knife and said, “One of your men grabbed my wife’s ass earlier, and he will die for that transgression. If you don’t apologize and give us some gas my wife will have to cut your neck and shit down your throat.”

  The man appeared visibly upset as he turned red in the face and said, “My man has a gun on you, and I have a gun in my lap, so exactly what will you do again?”

  Amy swung the knife backward, into the man’s heart, and then in one continuous motion threw the knife into the other man’s right eye. Both fell to the floor as Max scrambled to retrieve the men’s guns.

  Max handed a pistol to Amy and said, “Babe I was just jerking their chain. Don’t you think we could have waited until we were in a better position to try to escape?”

  Amy replied, “Look out the window down to the courtyard. They are executing people right now.”

  Max walked over to the window and gasped as he saw a large man used a machete to cut an old woman’s head off in front of her family. This sickened Max and made him feel helpless.

  “Babe what do we do to stop the carnage. There are only two of us. We can kill a dozen or so before they kill us, but we will be just as dead.”

  “Max on the other side of the lobby is a room full of rifles that we can use to arm the towns’ people and rid them of these animals. Follow my lead, and we will kill six more of them before they know they are being attacked,” Amy advised.

  “Okay, but only I get to rub your ass until we get back home.”

  “That’s a deal. Now prop the boss up in his chair, so it looks like he’s taking a nap with his head on his arms. Then call one of his men in and close the door when he enters. I’ll take care of the rest,” Amy said.

  “Hey bub, the big boss needs one of you for a minute,” Max said, counting only three men in the lobby area.

  The man rushed through the door. Max closed the door, Amy slit his throat, and Max took his guns. They repeated this two more times, and the idiots fell for it every time. Both now had two Glock 17s, an AR-15, and there were no guards in sight. Max and Amy walked out of the room as if they owned the place and opened the armory door to revealing hundreds of pistols, rifles, and shotguns.

  A lady came around the corner, crying as she came into the building from the execution. Amy caught her attention and walked her into the boss’s office. The woman smiled and then frowned. She was unsure who to trust.

  Amy held her hand and said, “Can you quietly get men in here who want to fight these bastards. We have killed the boss and his closest friends but need help getting rid of the rest of his gang.”

  “Yes, but I need you to help get rid of the guard who is watching the jail on the far side of this building. They have our police in the cells,” the lady replied.

  Max grabbed the Sat phone, and all three grabbed a handful of loaded weapons. They headed down to the jail to free the cops. After they staged the weapons at the entrance to the Sheriff’s office, Amy sent the lady in to tell the man that the boss was in the hallway and needed him. The lady went in and came out a minute later closely followed by Amy’s next victim. She knifed him under the back ribs and ripped upwards silencing him forever
. Then they opened the cells, armed the police, and turned them loose to arm citizens they trusted.

  The Sheriff asked, “Where is their boss, Lorenzo?”

  Amy replied, “In hell by now along with a half dozen of his men where I sent them. Now get your ass in gear and kill the others before they know what’s happening.”

  Max and Amy waited until the police were ready and then shot every one of the men who had executed the people in the courtyard.

  The Sheriff ran up and said, “Hey, don’t kill them all. We have to have a trial.”

  “Look, we all know what they did, and they must be killed like the cockroaches they are. If you held a trial, you would have to hang or shoot them later because you can’t feed them or keep guards watching them for 20 years,” Max replied.

  The old lady said, “Bob, stop being a wuss. The man is right. These criminals took over the city, have raped, and killed people at will. Never again.”

  The rest of the day was filled with sporadic gunfire as the police and their handpicked deputies killed the rest of the gang and a few towns’ people who had aided them. Amy and Max were viewed as heroes. They were housed at the best hotel and fed like kings in a world short on food.

  The town held a nice dinner for their new heroes the night before Max and Amy were to head north. They dined on steaks, sweet potatoes, green beans, and a Greek salad as local musicians played in the background. Max and Amy actually danced as they enjoyed an expensive bottle of red wine.

  Amy was thrilled to have a regular day without having to kill anyone and no fighting nearby. Max was ecstatic that he wasn’t being tortured, shot at, or knives being used on him. Then gunfire erupted outside the building, and dozens of men stormed into the ballroom and disarmed the police. Their leader fired a stream of bullets into the ceiling to get everyone’s attention, and everyone fell to the floor except Max and Amy whose eyes were focused on the large, powerful man with the Uzi in his hands.