by D. J. Molles
You husband and father
Lee rolled up Jason’s sleeve. The right arm seemed fine, but there was a thick bandage on the left. He peeled it back and revealed a deep bite mark in the forearm, just above the wrist.
In his death, Jason had proven himself useful again, providing Lee with an invaluable piece of information: gross exposure would result in becoming symptomatic within hours, and “turning” presumably soon after that. In a way, Lee felt relieved. If FURY bacterium had been on the knife the girl had used to stab him with the previous day, he would have been grossly exposed and already showing symptoms.
After folding the note and putting it back in Jason’s shirt pocket, he grabbed him by the feet because it was the least bloody part, and dragged him outside. What was left of Jason’s head unceremoniously bounced down the steps. Lee would have liked to give him more dignity, but under the circumstances, he felt that burying the bodies was the most dignity he could provide.
CHAPTER 6: SAM
It took him two hours to dig a hole wide enough for all three of the bodies to lie, shoulder-to-shoulder. The depth was short of 6 feet, but deep enough to cover them for quite a while. The soil in the backyard wasn’t bad, but after a few feet he’d hit the base of southern red clay that was near impossible to dig through without power tools. Despite the difficulty, he continued digging for another foot before he had exhausted himself.
Now it was almost 0900 hours.
The sun was already blazing, as he had predicted. His go-to-hell pack, chest rig, and M4 were propped in the dirt, next to the bodies. His combat shirt was dirty and soaked with sweat. Beside his equipment, completely ignoring the dead bodies, Tango was lying, watching Lee work and panting.
Lee tossed the shovel out of the hole and climbed out. He broke open a bottle of water, drank half and gave half to Tango.
He laid Marie in the ground first, then Jason. Then, between them both, he set Stephanie down. The three of them together made him think of the family portrait inside the house.
Before shoveling in the dirt, Lee decided to take Jason’s duty firearm and the two spare magazines from his belt. It was a Smith & Wesson M&P .40 caliber. A decent round, right between 9mm and .45 caliber on the power scale. He put these items in his go-to-hell pack, then got to shoveling.
When he had shoveled the hole full and tamped down the dirt, he went inside and retrieved the family photograph he’d looked at earlier. He thought about removing the photo and keeping it as a reminder of the good times, but decided it should remain with the Petersons. He placed it on the ground to mark their graves.
He was in the process of gearing up again when Tango suddenly stood, his ears erect. He looked around, then pivoted in the direction of Morrison Street and let out a low growl.
Lee froze in place, ceasing all movement and listening hard for whatever it was that had Tango all perked up. After a moment of hearing nothing out of the ordinary, Lee quickly clipped his chest rig in place, then slung into his M4. He knew better than to dismiss a warning from Tango. He grabbed his go-to-hell pack by a shoulder strap and sprinted as quietly as he could for the Petersons’ house.
He flew fast up the stairs and into the living room, wishing there was a way to secure the shattered sliding glass door. He went down the hall to the front door, checked to ensure it was locked, then peered out a nearby window. Beside him Tango whined and pranced around, sensing Lee’s tension.
Lee took the moment he was at the window to pull his pack on and tighten up the straps. He watched for another minute, not seeing anything. “What did you hear?” Lee broke away from the window and quickly ascended the stairs to the second level. He turned left, away from the master bedroom and into Stephanie’s bedroom. Everything was pink and flowers and princesses. If Lee had a moment to let his heart break, he was sure it would have.
The blinds were open, revealing an elevated vantage point of Morrison Street. Now he heard something. An engine? Definitely the sound of someone yelling...or screaming. It sounded like a man...make that men. Like cat-calls. What Jason might have called “hootin’ and hollerin’.” And the engine was definitely there. A revving engine, something powerful, like a V8.
The view of Morrison Street was narrow. Between the Petersons’ house and Lee’s house was a thick strand of forest that blocked any view of the road to the south. And Lee simply could not get a decent angle on the road to the north, though he knew there were no trees blocking it in that direction.
Coming from the south, on Morrison Street, Lee could see a red vehicle flashing through the trees, then finally came into view. It was a red pickup truck, a big dually with large off-road tires. In the back were two men armed with long guns, though he couldn’t tell whether they were rifles or shotguns. Lee couldn’t see through the windows of the vehicle and couldn’t tell how many more were inside. The pickup truck slowed. The men appeared to be looking for something.
Lee felt his heart pounding his entire body.
The men in the back began pointing wildly towards the wood-line. The pickup truck revved and lurched forward, lumbering off the road, causing one of the men in the bed to nearly fall out. Lee looked into the southern wood-line. Bursting out of the trees were two figures, a man and a boy.
Lee swore and pressed himself against the pink bedroom wall, keeping an eye on the two figures running. They were running in the distinct way that a rabbit runs from a pack of hounds. He leaned forward and saw the pickup truck skidding to a stop, kicking up dirt and grass. They were about a 100 yards from the two running figures. The doors to the pickup truck opened and the two men in the back hopped out. Three more men exited the vehicle, all armed with what appeared to be shotguns and hunting rifles.
The man and boy had been making for the house, but knew they wouldn’t make it. They had stopped running and the man stood, chest out, facing the five armed men from the pickup. The boy, barely in his teens, huddled behind the man who Lee presumed was his father.
The armed men slowed their walk to a strut and began talking loudly and laughing. Taunting. They fanned out as if preparing to flank the man and his boy. He couldn’t make out the details of the conversation but heard the words “fuck” and “pretty little boy” and that was enough.
“Tango, come.” Lee bolted out of the bedroom, down the stairs, and out the back door. Tango followed him eagerly.
Lee told Tango to stay a few feet back, then took the southwest corner of the house and peered around the brick and mortar base. Beyond the overgrown grass, Lee could see the father still shielding his son, but sidestepping towards the house. The man appeared to be fumbling in his pocket for something and finally produced what looked like a small, silver revolver.
“Don’t...” Lee whispered, fishing through a pocket in his chest rig and retrieving a 3x magnifier that he quickly attached to his M4, directly behind his scope.
The man pointed the revolver at the approaching gunmen and yelled. “Get the fuck back! I will shoot you!”
The man spoke with a thick accent that Lee pegged immediately as Arabic.
One of the men from the pickup spoke, presumably the leader. “If there were any bullets in that thing, you would have shot us already.”
Lee found the man’s cold logic bore the ring of truth. He figured the revolver was empty, carried for show, or possibly in the hopes of eventually finding ammunition for it.
The leader raised a hunting rifle and pointed it at the man. “And we don’t want you anyway, you hadji fuck.”
The Arabic man’s head snapped back, and a red mist spewed out. He toppled backward. The boy reached out for his father, then withdrew his hand and turned in Lee’s direction, running at full sprint. Close behind the boy, the five men all started laughing and jogging after him.
Lee had very little time to work.
As the boy cleared the corner, Lee grabbed him up, lightening quick, and clamped a hand over his mouth before he could scream. He pulled the boy in close—he could not have weighed more than 10
0 pounds—and whispered harshly in his ear. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m here to help you.” That was all he had time for. The boy went limp, and Lee hauled him up, wondering if he’d fainted.
Holding him with one arm, Lee sprinted for the trees with everything he had. His best bet was to be at the bottom of that hill before the men from the pickup cleared the corner. The horizon of the hill would hide them and the attackers would naturally assume the boy had gone into the house and would waste time searching it while Lee found them a better spot to hide.
His lungs heaving and legs burning, Lee made it to the hill and let his downward momentum take over. Tango ran beside him, looking up curiously at the boy. Lee listened past the pounding of his own heart in his ears for a surprised yell or anything that would tell him he had been discovered.
He made it to the bottom of the hill, but didn’t stop. He made for the shallow gully and the stream. If he hit the stream he could use that like a highway and take the boy to a point of relative safety, though he kept thinking about the fat fuck that had shot this boy’s father.
Reestablish law and order.
Another mission objective.
He remembered the sociology professor that had taught the Coordinators about different theories of how the world would be after a social collapse. “Swift and brutal justice will be the only way to break through the chaos. You will have to strike terror into not only those that have done wrong, but are even thinking of doing wrong. You have to be the boogeyman they check for underneath their beds. What I’m talking about isn’t arrest and trial by jury. Those techniques are only applicable in a civilized world. I am talking about merciless execution. Putting a bullet in the back of someone’s head for something you’d receive a citation for nowadays. I hope you are all ready to do this, because in the post-collapse world, anything less is weakness.”
Fine by me, Professor Thompson.
Lee made it to the creek bed and knelt down onto his knees. He stood the boy up, who looked a little dazed, and shook him. “Hey! Wake up, kid!”
The kid looked at him, still confused. “You understand me? You speak English?” The kid nodded. “Okay, come on. We have to run a little further.” Lee grabbed the kid by the hand while Tango stuck his wet nose in the kid’s face to see what smells Lee had been keeping from him. Lee swatted his nose away. “Leave it, Tango. Come on.”
Lee ran hunched over to keep his upper body under the edge of the gully and out of sight. They ran for perhaps another 100 yards, until Lee could not see the house any more. He found a fallen tree just over the top of the gully. The root system created a natural cave of dirt. Perfect to hide the boy.
Lee rolled over the side of the gully, then hauled the boy up. Tango followed with a swift jump and sniffed around the area. The boy was out of breath. Lee slung the go-to-hell pack off and set it on the ground in the little dirt cave. He patted the top of the bag. “Come here, kid. Sit down.”
The boy shuffled over, obviously scared. Either the water from the stream had splashed up on him or he had wet his pants. Lee didn’t blame him if he had. He’d seen grown men piss their pants in less harrowing situations.
When the boy had sat down on the pack, Lee knelt on his knees again, so they were at eye-level. He checked the boy over to make sure he wasn’t wounded anywhere. “What’s your name, buddy?”
“Sameer,” he said between breaths. “Everyone calls me Sam.”
“Okay, Sam.” Lee finished checking him over. No apparent injuries. “Are you thirsty?”
Sam nodded.
“Here...” Lee motioned for him to stand, which he did. Lee fished out a couple of water bottles, giving one to Sam and keeping the other. He uncapped it, drank two long gulps, then splashed some of it on his face. He dove back into the pack and pulled out the M&P .40 he’d taken from Jason.
Sam seemed nervous about the weapon. “How old are you, Sam?” Lee checked the weapon to make sure a round was loaded.
“I’m almost 13.” Sam seemed to do a few calculations in his head. “Next month.”
“Really?” Lee smiled and hoped it was convincing. “I thought you were 16. You look pretty old.”
Sam smiled weakly.
“Listen, Sam. As far as I’m concerned, you handled yourself like a man back there.” He put a hand on the kid’s shoulder and squeezed. “You’re a man in my book.”
Sam nodded by way of acknowledgement, then took a long gulp from his bottle of water.
Lee held the pistol towards him. “Sam, have you ever used one of these?” Sam stared at it. Eventually he shook his head. “Okay. Listen really closely. You have to pay attention.” Sam looked from the pistol to Lee. “I’m going to put this on the ground right next to you. This is not a toy and you do not play with it. In fact, I don’t even want you to touch it. The only time its okay for you to touch it, is if you see one of those guys that was chasing you, okay? Then all I want you to do is pick it up, hold it just like this, point it at them, and I want you to pull the trigger three times.” Lee held up three fingers. “Three times, Sam. If he’s not down after that, pull the trigger three more times. Okay? Did you get all of that?”
“Don’t touch it.” Sam nodded. “If I see a bad guy, shoot him three times. If he doesn’t die, shoot him three more times.”
Lee smiled. Kids grow up fast these days. Perhaps even faster during social collapse. “That’s right.” Lee set the pistol down. “You ever play Call of Duty?”
“Yeah.”
Lee nodded. “It’s just like in Call of Duty. Just remember that.”
“Just like in Call of Duty.” The kid looked briefly terrified. “Okay.”
Lee stood up and patted his leg. “Tango! Come!” to Sam he said, “You like dogs?”
“Sure,” Sam nodded.
“This is Tango. He’s gonna help keep you safe.” Lee rubbed Tango behind the ears, then pulled him towards Sam. “Let him smell you, Sam.” Sam offered his hand for Tango to smell and lick. Lee snapped his fingers to get Tango’s attention, then pointed to the ground at Sam’s feet. “Tango, guard it, boy. Guard it!”
Tango sat down in front of Sam. The kid was already small for his age, but next to the big dog he looked shrunken.
“Alright. I gotta go back up there for a little bit. No matter what you hear, don’t move from this spot. Stay right here with Tango until I get back.”
Sam nodded and Lee turned to leave. “Mister...”
Lee turned and looked at him.
“Are you gonna kill those men?”
No need for baby-talk. Lee nodded. “Yes.”
Sam just looked at him, but didn’t respond. Lee turned and dipped back into the gully and was gone.
***
Nearly ten minutes had elapsed since they shot Sam’s father.
Lee’s mind was hot and cold. He was a pressure cooker, building heat each time he replayed the image of Sam’s father and the bloody cloud exploding out of his head. Sam’s eyes, trying to make sense of it all. The men’s faces as they laughed. But through the anger his hands were still, his heart steady, and his mind a blank slate. He had no words, only images of death. With no remorse, he was going to kill everyone.
He crept quietly but speedily through the creek bed, then up over the lip and into the lower part of the Petersons’ backyard. He took cover behind a tree with a thick trunk and listened for a moment. Over the background noise of birds and insects, Lee could hear voices and what sounded like moving furniture.
They were ripping the house apart looking for Sam.
Lee darted from his point of cover, diagonally across the southwestern corner of the property and back into the wood-line of the forest between his house and the Petersons’.
Then he stalked, low to the ground, just inside the shadows of the trees, moving parallel to the wood-line, towards the house. With each step he carefully avoided twigs and dry patches of leaves. His feet rolled slowly heel-to-toe, his movements noticeable only to his own attuned ears. To anyone else, the
y made no more sound than the movements of a cat.
He stopped and knelt to the ground, keeping everything slow and deliberate now that he was in view of the house. Quick movements drew the eyes.
He smelled cigarette smoke.
From his perch about 50 yards out from the house, Lee spotted the smoker. He stood on the back deck with a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder, looking out into the woods while he enjoyed his smoke. Cigarettes were a sign that the enemy felt safe, relaxed, and in control.
He had the advantage. He already knew how many men there were. With one on the deck, four more remained inside. Including Fat Boy, the man that had shot Sam’s dad. From where Lee sat inside the woods, he could just barely make out the bed of the red pickup truck. He only had to slither a few more yards through the brush to get an angle on the truck that allowed him to see inside. One of the occupants had left a back door open, and the way the truck was parked, it provided Lee with a perfect view of the inside.
There was no one inside the truck. Lee thanked God for the first stroke of luck all day. A man in a red hat joined Smoker on the deck and they started conversing. The conversation was light-hearted, and included much back-slapping and laughing. These boys were raucous and it made Lee think of drunken rednecks. They stood around grab-assing while their buddies tried to find a 13-year-old boy, while that boy’s father lay dead in the dirt.
Lee wanted to pull Red Hat into the shadows and slide his Ka-Bar deep into his guts, working it around until he hit the heart and lungs. He wanted to hold his hand over Red Hat’s mouth and watch as the life fled from his eyes. He wanted to know that the last image Red Hat would ever see would be Lee’s smiling face.
That would be satisfying in the moment, but had little chance of success.
